Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Spam reduction

In an effort to decrease the level of spam on the blog I have enabled that you verify you are a human and not a meat popsicle before submitting a comment.

If this becomes too cumbersome and everyone doesn't mind a few viagara offers please LMK and I can disable this feature.

~Chris

PS - A free can of slightly used tennis balls to the first person that gets the movie reference correct.

Monday, January 25, 2010

WTT shines despite the lack of sun!





Warm weather, cloudy skies and a lot of amazing matches highlighted this past weekend in the WTT event held at Copperfield Racquet & Health Club. In the 4.5B bracket, the WTH team captained by Michael Le Tan and the BushWood Country Club led by Brian Smith cruised through the first two matches setting up a clash for these Titan teams. In a tightly contested women's doubles match, Abbe Ulrich and Emily Jacobs (WTH) were able to defeat Crystal Bryant and Sandi Pike (Bushwood), 6-4. Brian Smith and David Wanja (Bushwood) teamed up to defeat the Dibua brothers (Omon, Odion from WTH), 6-3. This match consisted of some awesome serves, amazing volleys and a lot of balls flying over the fences. The singles event for the ladies featured Nancy Nguyen (WTH) and Crystal Bryant (Bushwood) won by Nancy, 6-3. On the men's side, Brian Smith (Bushwood) was able to defeat Omon Dibua (WTH) 6-4 in another high powered match. Both teams were tied entering into the all important mixed doubles matches. Omon Dibua and Emily Jacobs (WTH) defeated Brian Smith and Sandi Pike (Bushwood) in the first mixed match 6-4. David Wanja and Crystal Bryant (Bushwood) took out Odion Dibua & Abbe Ulrich (WTH) in the deciding match, 6-3, leading Bushwood to a one point victory!






















In the other bracket, the Hook'em team captained by Betsie Hollis and Mason Creek captained by Monty Lindloff collided in the last match of the day as both of their teams were undefeated in the first two matches. Dawn Tollefson and Erin Keys (Hookem) took down Dustin Sadler and Julie Tolbert (Mason), 6-5 in the ladies doubles. Neil Carpenter and Peter Rothe (Mason Creek) teamed up to defeat Tim Green and Ted Phoummarath (Hookem), 6-4 in the men's doubles. Erin Keys (Hookem) played a very strong match and beat Dustin Sadler (Mason Creek) 6-2 in the ladies singles round. Neil Carpenter (Mason Creek) took on two different opponents in Ted Phoummarath & Robert Plummer (Hookem) and defeated the combo 6-5. That gave a 2 game edge to the Hookem team entering into the mixed doubles round. Tim Green & Dawn Tollefson (Hookem) took care of David & Daryl Hall (Mason Creek) 6-1 and Robert Plummer/Kaye Estrada (Hookem) defeated Monty Lindloff/Julie Tolbert (Mason Creek) 6-2 to give Hookem the victory.








Here is a list of the champions at each level:
3.5A Cinco Ranch Cinco Seis (3-0)
3.5B Tomball Fireants (3-0)
4.0A San Antonio Party Animals (3-0)
4.0B MPTC Fried Twinkies (3-0)
4.0C Copperfield Super Smash (3-0)
4.5A MPTC Hook'em (3-0)
4.5B Copperfield Bushwood Country Club (3-0)


The next WTT event will be held the weekend of June 12th & 13th. The schedule will be as follows:

Saturday, June 12th
3.0 (8 am, 12 pm and 4 pm)
4.0 (10 am, 2 pm and 6 pm)

Sunday, June 13th
3.5 (8 am, 12 pm and 4 pm)
4.5 (10 am, 2 pm and 6 pm)

Get a team together and participate in this unique event! For more information, go to http://www.wtt.com/ or contact Lance Loken at lance.loken@woodgroup.com

Check out the wtt event this Wednesday (January 27th) at the Australian Open. The Australians, featuring Pat Rafter, Pat Cash, Nicole Bradtke and Alicia Molik wil take on the International team of Tracy Austin, Goran Ivanisevic, Todd Martin and Mary Joe Fernandez!

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

A Few More Stats

Last week I addressed the question, “how much of 2009’s production did each team lose to YE09 bump-ups?” I looked at Mens’ 4.0 and 4.5, and only for Citywide Playoffs matches. This week the analysis is extended to all regular-season matches. Also, since it’s time I took a look at some of my new 4.0 competition, I’ve analyzed 3.5 as well.

In 4.5, the numbers are fairly uninteresting, since there were so few bumps to 5.0. But here’s what the data look like. I have sorted in order from those who return the least 2009 production (on an absolute basis) to those who return the most. Other sort orders may be more appropriate depending on the insight being sought.


Teams shaded in yellow are those that made it to Citywide. As with last week’s analysis, if a doubles line was won by a pair consisting of one returner and one non-returner, the returner was given 40% of the credit for the victory.

In 4.5, it looks like most teams did not lose too much production, as expected. Some stats on the impact of self-rates are shown as lagniappe. It doesn’t appear that self-rates had much of an impact on 4.5 (overall only 13% of matches were won by self-rates), if there is a sandbagging problem you’d expect it to be at the lower ratings.

In 4.0 the numbers are shown below:

Results are broadly consistent with those from the Citywide Playoffs analysis – the top teams have a lot of rebuilding to do, and from about Bear Creek on down the list there appear to be several teams that are relatively well-placed entering 2010.

The real eye-popping results are in 3.5. First let’s look at Citywide Playoffs results:
Two numbers stand out for me – only 10% of lines were won by those who will return to 3.5 in 2010, and 37% were won by self-rates. Clearly, if there is a problem with people underrating themselves, it is in 3.5.

For the full regular season, 3.5 looks like this:

A higher % of lines were won by returnees in the regular season vs. the playoffs, but then you’d expect it since it’s the more-successful teams (i.e. those reaching the playoffs) that suffer most from bumpage. The numbers are MUCH lower in 3.5 than 4.0. I also found it very interesting to see that again 38% of lines won were won by self-rates. I’m sure some of that is legitimate but it just feels high. It would be interesting to see how the won-lost records of the self-rates compare with those of the others…perhaps the subject of a future post.

Those are the numbers, I’d be interested in any other insights that readers can glean from these.

Saturday, January 2, 2010

Year End Appeals

Based on the uproar that occurred due to the year end ratings, I conducted a search to see how many people in Houston were granted an appeal on their rating. I expected a low number of positive appeals, but never expected anything like this. Out of a total of 3,847 players in Houston a total of 40 were successful (1.0%). In the male category, there were 17 out of 1,508 (1.1%) and in the female bracket, there were 13 out of 2,339 (0.6%).

Males successful appeals by level
3.0 rating (1)
3.5 rating (7)
4.0 rating (9) --Ron Fisher, Ron Latta, Ngoc Xuan Nguyen, Tim Purcell, David Romero, David Wallis, Kenneth Weber, John Woodley, Ronald Zeringue

Females
3.0 rating (2)
3.5 rating (5)
4.0 rating (4) --Christel Dekker, Wendy Elsey, Lisa Littlefield, Trisha Luong
4.5 rating (4.5) --Maria Herrera, Darla Shaub

Just some food for thought. Happy New Year!