{"id":39740,"date":"2013-11-25T00:18:14","date_gmt":"2013-11-25T00:18:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/?p=39740"},"modified":"2015-02-03T23:50:49","modified_gmt":"2015-02-03T23:50:49","slug":"usta-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/?p=39740","title":{"rendered":"USTA"},"content":{"rendered":"

THE United States Tennis Association (USTA), which hosts the glittering US Open every year in New York where Serena Williams and Roger Federer come to play, also manages a grass roots amateur league in which I belong and this book is about. It gets us out in the dead winter night or glorious summer evening. Over 770,000 bums and weekend hackers register to play on the League for a chance to compete with peers\u00a0around the country in the Nationals every year. Our journey is no less arduous and filled with gut wrenching moments, and the reward is\u00a0no less satisfying. (Sans the US$3.6 million dollar prize \u2013 Serena\u2019s pay check for winning 2013 US Open \u2013 of course and $4m in 2014)<\/p>\n

\"usta\"<\/a>USTA is the governing body for the sport of tennis in the USA. Reportedly it is\u00a0the largest in the world. The\u00a0fifty\u00a0states on the Stars and Stripes are being regrouped into\u00a0seventeen geographical sections<\/a>. Under the Sections are the regions. My local league, Metro is one of the five Regions in the Eastern Section.\u00a0\u00a0Although\u00a0I can play anywhere but choose Long Island and Metro is due to proximity. Really, the world is your oyster. Indeed, I have mates who traveled a great deal to be on my team. One\u00a0shuttled from Chicago,\u00a0anther\u00a0commuted from Seattle\u00a0on the west coast and one journeyed\u00a0from Hong Kong.<\/p>\n

Each region runs by a Local League Coordinator with\u00a0program\u00a0catering to\u00a0varying\u00a0ages groups and genders. The mixed doubles dominates the winter season and men and women are played out in the spring and summer.\u00a0For Metro, the LLC sends out a Call for Captains<\/em> email in September for the mixed season, which\u00a0effectively announces\u00a0that the advent of\u00a0a\u00a0new year\u00a0has just begun.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

THE United States Tennis Association (USTA), which hosts the glittering US Open every year in New York where Serena Williams and Roger Federer come to play, also manages a grass roots amateur league in which I belong and this book is about. It gets us out in the dead winter night or glorious summer evening. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tennis-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39740"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39740\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}