HomeWhy this System Works

Why this System Works

This system was built on my many years of experience as a junior and college tennis player. I competitively played tennis throughout high school, college and beyond. Over the years, I have participated in tournaments in the role of competitor, club pro and director of tennis, club owner, tournament director, referee, event planner, and a father of junior and adult tennis players. I have also personally worked with over 100 sectional and nationally ranked junior players.

Many players use tournaments as their primary conduit for testing their skill set and playing against other players who will challenge them to improve. Players of all ages and skill levels expect to enter a tournament to prove themselves, improve their game, and feel that the entire experience was worth the time and money it took to play.

Unfortunately, I began to realize long ago that the majority of tournaments and organized tennis events do not speak to those desired areas, and instead limit the amount of development a player can receive from tournament play. That is a significant problem-after all, when I used to enter tournaments as a competitive player, one of the primary reasons I entered was to improve my skill level, but what I usually got instead was frustration.

During my teenage years and early twenties, I played in 200 to 300 collegiate and tournament matches per year. I found that most matches were simply not challenging; therefore, they were not a productive investment of my time and money, and they did not lead to any significant improvement in my game.

I still continued to play in as many tournaments as I could, driving as much as three to four hours one way in order to participate. Most of the time, when I played the first round match, I would either win too easily or lose too quickly. If I won my first round, the second round match was the same-won easily or lost quickly.

Sometimes I would have a good match, meaning the match was close and challenged me to improve my game and push myself. Unfortunately, such match-ups were few and far between.

I wondered how this could be-I knew there were plenty of players out there who played at a similar skill level to my own. So why wasn't I being paired with them? Why was I either feeling too little pressure or too much pressure in tournament after tournament?

Over the years, I noticed that the fundamental problems rest in the way tournaments are structured. Improper skill match-ups coupled with the extended downtime between matches cause most experiences to be unsatisfying and wearisome, rather than constructive and engaging.

When I began to run my own tournaments, I used the same tournament models that have been in place for years-typical elimination or straight-draw tournaments-and I noticed the same lack of satisfaction in the outcome of most of my tournaments.

I came to discover that as many as 75 percent of the participants in traditional tournament structures are unevenly matched. That means only one quarter of players time receive any real value from the competition. The percentage is even less for top players; I believe only 5 to 10 percent of top-tier junior tennis players get a valuable return on their time and money investment.

Translation? Most players do not get to play after the first couple of rounds, the match-ups are abysmally lopsided, and the amount of tournament downtime is downright tedious for most participants and spectators.

I knew there had to be a better way.

The majority of the typical elimination or straight-draw tournaments require sometimes significant amounts of travel time. The average financial cost to enter a tournament is typically around $50, and the overall cost of the on to two day trip can be anywhere from $300 to $600, plus the value of the time parents spend away from home and work.

Pairing players according to age and gender is just not providing players and their parents with what they are hoping to receive. That is why the JUNIOR TENNIS CIRCUIT model has junior players compete by playing matches that are much more closely suited to their unique ability level. The divisions are separated into five distinct levels, from beginner to advance, which is explained in levels of play section.

What others are saying about Mike and Junior Tennis Circuit

"Having been somebody who has run a lot of tournaments, and was involved in a lot of tournaments (we were up to 45 tournaments a year), I saw what the needs were from the users. Thinking in terms of the needs of the people who operated the tournaments and organized them, I tried to facilitate a good experience. Your program lends itself to that by being more efficient, number one, and number two, I believe it will increase the quality of the event. It's the quality of the event that's important, like any business. If you have a good quality event, the participants will want another event. I know operators of tennis clubs, being the pros, owners, or the managers, want to get good feedback that it was a good event for everyone, so they will want to do another event in the following months. I think your program lends itself to a more efficient event, and additionally, it has financial rewards, because there are cost that go into every event. They come from different vendors.. In your program you have the vendors already arranged, so you are going to get cost savings. You are going to have more time to spend on the event, to keep the quality high, and that is the experience of playing tennis and watching as a parent and a grandparent. That's important. Your provides recognition and provides all the tools that you need, and it's all electronic, for the most part, and for a minimal cost. So for an operator or tennis pro, or someone like myself who has run tournaments for 20 years, that certainly gets my attention! Because then I think I can do better quality events this year and I'll have better feedback and I'll have more people playing in them. That's what I see from your program. As I'm thinking back, all the points that were really the hurdles that were tough, you have simplified that and I believe your program will do that. Good job Mike!"

Roland Roos
Certified Public Accountant
(Roland Roos Company)
20 years as president of a local tennis association (C.C.T.A.)