News

USTA League Weather Rules: Heat, Rain, Darkness and Who Makes the Call
There is no national USTA rule that tells you when it is too hot, too wet, or too dark to play a local league match. Weather calls are local: your district or section's league regulations say who decides and how rescheduling works, the facility controls its own courts, and once a match has started, the decision on court belongs to the people standing on it. What is uniform everywhere: a suspended match is resumed, not replayed — the score you stopped at is the score you restart at. Here is... Read more...
USTA NTRP Appeal Rules: Who Can Appeal, and How the Computer Decides
You appeal an NTRP rating in TennisLink, and a computer answers on the spot. Computer-rated and mixed-exclusive players can appeal up or down. Self-rated players can only appeal up. The system compares your hidden dynamic rating to the level line and grants or denies instantly — USTA does not publish the tolerance, and there is no way to check your eligibility without actually filing. One more thing worth knowing before you click: a denied appeal is final. No second try, no email to the section office that fixes it. Here... Read more...
USTA Tri-Level Rules: Three Lines, Three Levels, One Lineup
USTA Tri-Level Rules: Three Lines, Three Levels, One Lineup Tri-level is a USTA doubles league where each team match is played on three courts at three different NTRP levels — most commonly 3.0/3.5/4.0 or 3.5/4.0/4.5. Each line has a rating ceiling: a player at or below 3.5 can play the 3.5 line, and playing up a line is allowed while playing down is not. Win two of the three courts and your team wins the match. Local tri-level seasons run fall and winter because the format feeds invitational events —... Read more...
USTA Combo League Rules: How the Combined-Rating Cap Works
USTA Combo League Rules: How the Combined-Rating Cap Works Combo is a doubles-only USTA league where the level is a cap on the two partners' combined NTRP ratings. In 7.5 combo, a 4.0 and a 3.5 are legal (7.5 exactly), a 3.5 and a 3.5 are legal (7.0, under the cap), and a 4.0 paired with another 4.0 is not (8.0, over). Most sections also cap the spread between partners — commonly at 1.0, which is what keeps a 4.5 from dragging a 3.0 around the court in 7.5. Levels... Read more...
Tennis Line Call Rules: Who Calls What, and When It's Hooking
Quick answer: in an unofficiated tennis match — which is every USTA league match until a roving official wanders over — you call the lines on your side of the net, your opponent calls theirs, and any ball you cannot clearly call out is in. That's the core of The Code, the USTA's rulebook for matches without officials, published inside Friend at Court. Doubt goes to your opponent, every time, on every line. The rest of this page is what that means when the ball is a moonball landing on... Read more...
USTA Mixed Doubles Rating Rules: How the Combined Cap Works
Quick answer: in USTA Mixed doubles, your two NTRP ratings added together may not exceed the level you're playing. A 7.0 mixed pair can be 4.0 + 3.0 or 3.5 + 3.5 — never 4.0 + 3.5. That's the whole national rule: a combined cap, set by the division level (6.0 through 10.0 for 18 & Over, 6.0 through 9.0 for 40 & Over), under the USTA League National Regulations' division structure. There is no national rule requiring an even split, and no national maximum spread between partners — though... Read more...
Captain tooling: MatchTime, the USTA lineup tool and TeamCowboy
Three tools cover a USTA league captain's week and they are not competing for the same job. The USTA's own team management tool is where the official lineup is created and sent. MatchTime collects player availability, imports your USTA schedule and builds a lineup around who is actually free. TeamCowboy is a general team-admin platform with RSVPs, a message board and a payment tracker, and it is free. Most captains who run a tidy team end up using two: one to gather availability, one to file the lineup. The cadence... Read more...
Senior Tennis Shirts: Cut, Sleeve, Neck and Length
Senior tennis shirts come down to four things, and only one of them is the fabric everybody asks about first: the cut, the sleeve, the neck and the length. Most tennis tops sold today are cut slim and short for a player in their twenties, and the single most common complaint we get from 55 & Over and 65 & Over league players is not about performance material at all - it is that the shirt rides up on the serve and the armhole is cut too high to reach... Read more...
Cold Weather Tennis Outfit: Three Layers for League Night
A cold weather tennis outfit is three layers and one decision. The three layers are a top you can play a whole match in, a long sleeve you start in and take off, and something warm that never sees a point. The decision is what you are prepared to carry when you take a layer off in the third game, because outdoors in the cold that always happens and there is nowhere to put it. What we actually print for this The layer that comes off at 3-2 and the... Read more...
USTA 40 and Over League Rules: Age, Rating and Residency
USTA 40 and over league rules work on two independent tests, and a player has to pass both. You must be old enough for the age division in the year the league runs, and you must be rated at or below the NTRP level of the team you play on - Reg. 2.01A(1) states that when using straight NTRP levels a player cannot have an NTRP rating higher than the NTRP level in which they are competing. Age gets you into the division. Rating gets you onto the team. Neither... Read more...
USTA Grievance Rules: The Five Types, and Which One You Need
USTA grievance rules divide into five named types, and filing under the wrong one is the most common way a complaint dies before anybody looks at it. The five are General, Administrative, National League, Eligibility and NTRP (Regs. 3.02A to 3.02E). They go to different committees, on different timelines, and one of them - the Administrative Grievance - explicitly cannot be brought against a captain. What we actually print for this Printed for the people who keep the lineup card six days later. Seventies Serve — Funny Tennis Women's Relaxed... Read more...
Indoor Tennis Clothes: What to Wear in a Heated Court
Indoor tennis clothes are a different problem from outdoor winter clothes, and most people dress for the wrong one. The building is heated, the air is still, and there is no wind and no sun. You will be warmer at minute twenty indoors in January than you were outdoors in October. Dress for a warm room you arrive at cold - one playing layer, one layer you take off in the first changeover, and nothing you would be miserable in for two hours. What we actually print for this The... Read more...