Proposed New Scoring System for 2020

HEAD Liverpool and District Tennis Group
 
Proposed new scoring system for 2020 season
 
The League Committee are committed to moving away from the outdated scorecard system of sending results in by post to an online system for collation of results and creating the league tables. We want to use the LTA League Planner (LTALP) system which was successfully used in the 2019 Autumn League.

The drawback for the LTALP system is that it does not allow for our current scoring system when matches finish 3-2 or 3-1 where 2 points are awarded to the winning team and either 1 or 0 are awarded to the losing team.

With this in mind, last season we trialled a new match format where each pair played each other for a long set to 8. This format had the advantage of allowing a scoring system of 2 points for a win and 1 for a draw and removed the argument that pairs where not always played in strict order of strength as they all played each other. This system however was not universally liked by all as quite often the 3rd round of events became dead rubbers if the score was 6-0, 5-1 or even 4-2. It was also felt that if you lost 5-4 you still got nothing, one suggestion was to score a point for each set won.
The committee have therefore decided not to continue with this system this season but would like to introduce a scoring system whereby you get 2 points for a win and 1 point for a draw. This will enable us to use LTALP this season.
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If we can introduce this there are some consequences –

1. All players would require an LTA BTM number in order for them to be entered on to the system.
2. We would need to decide how many events constituted a completed match. At the moment it is 4 which can result in a 4-0 win, 3-1 win or a 2-2 draw. Under LTALP that would mean the winners receiving 2 points in the winning situation and for the draw 1 point each. If we decide to change it to 5 events to be completed unless the score is 4-0, then a team winning 3-2 are incentivised to not to complete the 6th event whilst the losing team would want to finish it. If we decide to change it to all 6 events must be completed, unless the score is 4-0, 4-1 or 5-0 this could result in more replays or both teams trying their best to complete the match.
3. If we introduce it this season we then need to decide if we still do the scorecards for this season as a backup just in case something unforeseen goes wrong.
4. The LTALP allows us to prevent new players being introduced after week 10 of the season so we could in theory get rid of player registration.

Prior to the fixtures meeting on 5th March we plan to hold an EGM to discuss these matters and any others regarding the scoring system, with the hope that the changes are approved.

The league has been setup on LTALP, without a scoring system in place at the moment, so if we do decide to go down that route everything will be in place for the start of the season.

If you are unsure how to input results onto LTALP or wish to share with your members how to enter results please click on this link -https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JJ-BGIkj0A
 
We believe that this will be a big step forward for the league and welcome as much feedback and suggestions from you prior to the EGM. If I receive other ideas I will circulate them to all clubs as quickly as possible prior to the EGM,
 
Thanks,
 
Jamie Semple