Dear dimwit on the phone

Dear dimwit at the store,
Can you not have your coughing fit while leaning into a food display? I see you had the wherewithal to put down your phone to not cough in someone's ear, but I'll take that over you spreading your disease everywhere.

 

You can shuffle a tennis lineup?
In RI the ladder rules are pretty solid, but we have four singles players and three doubles teams. Singles players don't double up. Lineup shuffles are rare, but coaches have been known to not let the No. 5 or 6 kid challenge to move up because they want to keep a strong doubles team together.

 

There's an old guy who calls all the time about the baseball team and I'm not sure why since it's obvious he doesn't watch or listen to or read about a single game. He's always calling to ask when the game is on, or who's pitching, or how the team did and how the pitcher did. But he does this 162 times a year, not counting the hundreds of other calls for other sporting events he doesn't watch either. Whenever he calls while the game is still playing I mention to him that it's still on TV.

One time he called to ask who won the Preakness, even though it was the Belmont that had just run. I was tempted to tell him who won the Preakness. I doubt he wouldn't known the difference.

 

It usually has less to do with letting kids challenge and more matching up kids in different spots. So you know their No. 1 single kid is going to destroy whoever he faces, but you're competative everywhere else. You then move your No. 1 kid down to No. 2 with the hope by conceeding one you have a better chance to win three.

In other places where you play a round robin format--where everyone plays one set against everyone else--you might start your best player against their weakest to get that kid warmed up and possibly steal a few before your No. 1 plays their No. 1.

 

Can't do that here. In RI you can't change a lineup (minus injury or absence) without challenge matches. I've heard rumblings of some coaches, who clearly want a lineup change, having guys play challenge matches until they get the result they want. My sophomore year my partner and I went undefeated at doubles, so the second time we faced teams in the regular season, we saw a couple No. 1 doubles teams that had "lost" challenge matches, but the thought - from our coach, at least - was they were punting No. 1 and hoping the old No. 1 could beat us.
The elite teams in the state don't do much, but it's usually the crap divisions with crap teams where shady stuff happens.

 

Gotcha. It seems with no way to prove you actually played a challenge match, why have challenge matches?

That's why I liked the round robin better, there was no way around someone's best player.

 

I was thinking the same scenario, except you put your best singles player in doubles to beef up that point and let the weaker doubles player take the singles match.
Around playoff time, some of our high school coaches will do this with mixed doubles. They'll have two pretty good players who might win a match in singles at the state tournament, but obviously aren't as good as some of the top players, so they pair them up in mixed doubles where they can do some damage and make a run at a state championship.

It might vary by state, though. Here, there's two separate state tournaments. One is for individuals, and the other for teams. In the individual tournament, you're obviously set at whatever position you're entered as. In the team tournament, coaches can play match ups however they want.

 

So confused.
What's a round robin format? Guys get randomly paired up?
Coaches can't get away with much here because the state's so small. Results are in the ProJo every day, so it's not hard to see if a coach is pulling a fast one or not. There have been instances where coaches have sent injured kids out and had them forfeit their point so they didn't have to adjust the whole lineup, but real controversy doesn't happen as much as people think.
We have two state tournaments too; the team championship and the individual ones, but you can't enter singles players into the doubles tourney or vice versa. There's a qualifying tournament and you go from there, but a lot of shenanigans happen there. It usually falls on an SAT day, so teams get all sorts of screwed up. Coaches will enter doubles teams of JV kids just because and it's no big deal because they get stomped so no one made a rule about you having to play X amount of matches before being entered in the tourney.
Well, a few years ago a nationally ranked junior decided he wanted to play HS tennis - he was home schooled and lived in the district - so he got his requisite 10 days of practice in, the 10th coming the day before the qualifier, and was entered in the tourney. Coaches got pissed.
So then the state seeding tournament happens and more controversy. They didn't give the kid the 1 seed and then finagled the bracket so he wouldn't play anyone good until the quarters so good kids would still make all-state.

 

The round robin is you start with No. 1 vs No. 1, No. 2 vs No. 2 and so on. They play one set against another then rotate. No. 1 plays No. 3 then plays No. 2 etc until everyone has played all the singles/double from the other team. So they all end up playing three sets and team scores are based on how many sets it wins.

 

Holy crap that's a real thing? I can't tell if I like it or not, but it sounds pretty damn interesting.

 

In Kansas, tennis tournament lineups are set in concrete once the tournament starts and can't be changed for any reason. If you have a guy get hurt, that spot's open the rest of the day. In duals, you can do what you like.

 

Dimwit update, or sportsjournalists.com karma strikes again: Team that didn't report individual results Thursday loses in semis today.