As an ALTA tennis captain it has either happened to you or you know someone who it has happened to — losing points due to accidentally playing a player who is NOT registered in ALTA (altaTennis.org).  ALTA is understandably very strict about playing a non-registered player.  The rules specifically state that player must be registered before midnight the night before scheduled play — so for a Saturday morning match, a player must be registered in ALTA’s system by 11:59pm Friday night.

So what happens if you play a player who is NOT registered?  You lose the point from that match if it was won, but will also lose all points above it as well.  For instance, an unregistered player plays at line 4 and wins along with line 5 winning as well — the team will forfeit the points from line 4 & 5 to the other team.  Now lets compound this another step farther, with the mailed in scorecards, the coordinator might not alert you to the infraction for another week and could result in another week of point losses!  Unfortunately it could mount up to 4-10 points forfeited and also take a team out of contention for division winner and playoffs!  A really big bummer!

TennisPoint.com now alerts you [captain] when a player is NOT confirmed with our ALTA Roster Confirmation!

Lets walk through the specifics of the TennisPoint ALTA Roster Confirmation System. After creating your team & schedule, you will see a message like the following:

The first step is to click on “Click here to confirm players” and you will be prompted to enter your ALTA Team confirmation number and the captain’s ALTA number.  Example here:

Once you click on “Submit –> Player Confirmation”, TennisPoint will import in your ALTA roster from altaTennis.org and auto-match your players based off player ALTA # and full name.

After all the processing you get a nice confirmation page letting you know all the details like this:

You will notice based off the screen shot above that 3 players weren’t “auto-matched” and the captain has the ability to match these players up manually.

What about creating a lineup though for a match?  This is the important part because we show the captains who is NOT confirmed so that a player can be confirmed/registered BEFORE playing and keep the points won!

You will notice in the image to the right (the drop down to the right is shown in the create lineup page), the section stating “NOT Confirmed as ALTA Registered” and these player(s) need to be confirmed in TennisPoint as ALTA Registered first.

We have a feeling that the TennisPoint ALTA captains will REALLY appreciate this peace of mind!!!  Any questions around this powerful new feature let us know.

Have great matches out on the courts!

TennisPoint Member Services

With Fall ALTA just around the corner we thought it would be a good idea to review the ALTA Sandbagging rules since their is really tooooooo much confusion around this and the examples on it are very vague unfortunately. Let us review the existing rules that are in place from ALTA:

1. A previously played (win or lose) pairing can only go up OR down 1 line together — ie: line 2 to 3.
2. Regardless of previously winning or losing, a single player in a NEW pairing can only go up OR down 2 lines — ie: line 1 to line 3.
3. A losing pair can NOT be moved up 1 line while a winning pair goes down 1 line — aka true sandbagging by possibly putting the weaker line up higher and the stronger line lower trying to get a win/point.

Well that really is not that many rules - granted we are only talking about sandbagging rules (Adult ALTA rules & Junior ALTA rules) and they can get really complicated quickly as the season moves along. Let us look at a good example:

A little information about the image above… Each match day has 5 lines each with 1 pairing (10 people). I labeled the pairings with letters and colored them green for a WIN and red for a LOSS — Purple is an ILLEGAL move. The assumption is that I have to create a lineup for week 4…. so lets analyze the details week by week:

• Week 1: All the pairings are new so anyone can play with anyone anywhere — EASY.
• Week 2: Now the rules start kicking in since pairings have been created and player lines defined.
  • Pair B moved down 1 line - legal since the pair went down 1 line and the pairing above them (line 2) was a NEW pairing (Pair X)
  • Pair Y is also a new one at line 5 which is fine as well
• Week 3: Pair X moved from line 2 to line 1 which was a legal move
  • Pair B moved up 1 line from week 2 which was a legal move as well
  • Line 4 has an illegal move since one player from pairing A moved from line 1 to line 4 — the lowest the player could go down was to line 3.
    • If this was truly played then the team would lose points for line 4 AND line 5 — wow that would suck!
• Week 4: LOTS going on here with the proposed lineup!
  • Line 2 is an ILLEGAL move (Pair A last at line 1 for week 2 and Pair X previously at line 1 for week 3) when Pair B is moved above since the pairing (B) lost in week 2. If we go back up to our ALTA sandbagging rules above these moves violate rule 3.
  • Line 3 stayed in the same position so no problem.
  • Line 4 stayed in the same position (last paired together on week 2) so no problem as well.
  • Line 5 is an ILLEGAL move as well since the pair was together on week 1 at line 3 and can ONLY go up/down 1 line. Notice that this rules goes back to the LAST time played together and in this case it was on week 1.

You will notice by the examples above that it can get pretty crazy real quick! Imagine also have a good lineup (all 5 lines) created correctly and have one of your players in line 2 say they can not play last minute — if you do not use a software like TennisPoint will you remember all the previous weeks to ensure a legal move?

Why is it important to NOT make an illegal move? It is VERY important because from the line where the error was made and above, ALL points earned will be stripped! For instance, if an illegal move happened at line 2 and lines 2, 3, 4 & 5 won that day then your coordinator will be calling you to tell you about your illegal move and that all points earned for lines 2 - 5 will go to your competitor!

When creating my lineups on TennisPoint do I have think about it? You will want to think about it for planning purposes and TennisPoint will perform sandbagging check to keep you safe as well!

Well for those teams that are making it into ALTA playoffs… CONGRATS!!! For the teams that have made it to the playoffs before know that ALTA uses averages of the line numbers each player has previously played — when you win a line, you get the number for that line and if you lost, you add a .5 to it. For instance, if a player played line 1 and won the first week and played line 1 the second week and lost, the player would have a calculation like this: (1 + 1.5)/2 = 1.25 for that players average.

When creating each line, you take the averages from all the previous matches played for both of that players at that line combined.

To some this may seem a little complicated. The great thing is TennisPoint.com handles all the playoff calculations for you.

If you want to view the averages for all your players or even export the numbers to an Excel Spreadsheet, go to the “Create Lineup” or “Edit Lineup” page and click on the “View ALTA Playoff Numbers” link. You will then get a page like this:

Normally the captain has to take the numbers above (from image) and put them into a spreadsheet and spend tooooo many hours playing with the lineup to ensure all the “player averages” are in the correct order — smallest to largest.

TennisPoint.com makes creating your playoff lineups VERY simple and painless as well! If you would like to start planning BEFORE you have your playoff schedule from the coordinator, edit your schedule and put in a facility for the first playoff (remember you can edit it once the coordinator give you your official competitor without affecting lineups). After you submit your changes to the schedule, (the addition of the facility name for playoffs) you will notice that Playoff 1 shows up in your “all matches” view. Now when you click on Create Lineup you will notice the ALTA playoff Numbers in there based off the players you choose. Here is a snippet of the create lineup:

FYI, the demo account has already had the schedule updated so that the Playoff 1 is visible in there (it has a facility name for the competitor). Feel free to play around with the account since the data is reset every hour.

Any questions about the creation of lineups for playoffs let us know.

Regards,

TennisPoint.com Staff

We have all been there before when you have to default a line… sometimes a few too many are on vacation. Tennispoint makes it easy now for you to still create a lineup and correctly show the default without any players getting mad at you for having them in there.

When you you select the players in the drop down for creating a lineup look at the VERY bottom of the list. You will notice a player call “Defaulting Line”. Select the defaulting line player for both of the entries if it is a doubles line. FYI, no sandbagging checks will be made for the defaulting line either or mess up your playoff points calculations if you make playoffs.

FYI, for those that created their own default players to do this you no longer need to, but will still need to keep those default/retire players in there for this team

We have had the request from several captains for the ability to entirely delete a lineup — even after it has been posted to the team.

When you are editing a lineup, you will notice a link in the upper right hand corner stating “Delete & Start Over”. When you click this link you will get a confirmation first and after clicking “ok” you will be taken back to an empty lineup form. If you want to NOT publish a new lineup at that time, just click on the cancel button and you will be taken back to the all matches view…. then later on sometime you can create a new lineup.