Each and every tournament that it staged on the ITF and WTA/ATP tours, has a Fact Sheet, which players can access in the weeks leading up to the event.
These fact sheets provide details such as the tournament dates (for the qualifying and main draw events, singles and doubles); transport guidelines (nearest airport, station etc); the tournament hotel (not always the cheapest or nicest in the area, but the one that has been selected by the organisers as being convenient); the distance to the tennis club from the hotel; the availability of transport between the site and the tournament hotel; the names and numbers for the key tournament staff (the Tournament Director and Tournament Supervisor); and contacts for Safeguarding issues etc.
Each player is advised to review the fact sheet in advance of the tournament and take guidance from it. She will then make contact with the tournament organisers if she has any queries, using the contact details provided.
However, in some countries, most notably the USA, the tennis federation (in this case the USTA – the United States Tennis Association) has its own Pro Circuit website, and the tournaments organised by the USTA have their own fact sheets. The problem with this is which fact sheet should the players use as their main guide – the WTA/ITF one, or that of the ‘local’ tennis federation, especially in instances where the details provided are conflicting?
This happened recently at a W75 tournament in Florida. On the ITF fact sheet the sign in for the qualifying singles event was listed as 18.00 on 5th May 2024, with the event taking place on the 6th and 7th May. On the USTA Pro Circuit fact sheet however, it stated that the sign in and site access was on Saturday 5th May (when Saturday was actually the 4th), and with the event starting on Sunday 5th May? Confused? So were we! Needless to say, there were lots of messages being sent to and from players and the tournament organisers on Saturday 4th, in an attempt to clarify the situation as players did not want to turn up on the 5th ready to play on the 6th, only to find out that the event had already started.
Now you might say, well it’s obvious that you follow the ITF fact sheet but I beg to differ as my player got defaulted from a junior event a few years back for not using the USTA website as her guide – difficult when she didn’t even know that this website even existed (why would she – she is from the UK).
In this instance, the ITF Junior event was being held at the Merrion Cricket Club in Haverford, Pennsylvania. Matches had been interrupted as a result of rain so we had left the site, along with many other players. Unbeknown to us, the matches were moved a few hours later, to another venue (with indoor courts) and when we eventually found this out and turned up, the organiser said my player had been defaulted for not showing up on time – we had gone to the club first expecting to play there only to be told at that point that the venue had changed!
There were two issues with this. Firstly, the change of venue had only been posted on a notice board at the club and on the USTA website – not on the ITF Junior website. And secondly, they told us that they had called us to tell us to come to the new venue but when we asked to see the number they had called, they showed us a number that was not ours – the referee had misread the number and called another player.
My player was not surprisingly pretty upset at all of this – to lose a match is one thing but to be defaulted is another. So now, whenever we are in the US we do try to remember to look at both the ITF and the USTA websites, just in case! It was a tough lesson to learn but learn it we did. So a word of advice to all parents and players out there, regularly check all sources of information. The ITF/WTA/ATP websites should be the correct ones but you just never know – especially if you are playing in the US!
#realitytennis
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