The STC Times 1 Dedicated to the health and enjoyment of SaddleBrooke Residents Volume 2, Issue 8 August 2016 By Jay Clayton Wilson A sensible, new Organized Play Using Scoring (OPUS) program for men has been launched by the Board of Directors and greeted with great enthusiasm. It provides better tennis by more efficiently arranging matches between similarly skilled players. The men’s 3.5 and 3.0 groups will be particularly pleased because that is where occasional mismatches have been reported in the past. Read more to see how OPUS works. Chris Madsen and Liam Flynn were appointed to initiate the OPUS program beginning last July. They have already noted satisfactory improvements in our organized play games. STC can expect the goal of the program to be Photos by TJ Duffy
Transcript
The STC Times 1
Dedicated to the health and enjoyment of SaddleBrooke Residents
Volume 2, Issue 8 August 2016
By Jay Clayton Wilson
A sensible, new Organized Play Using Scoring (OPUS) program for
men has been launched by the Board of Directors and greeted with great
enthusiasm. It provides better tennis by more efficiently arranging matches
between similarly skilled
players. The men’s 3.5 and
3.0 groups will be
particularly pleased because
that is where occasional
mismatches have been
reported in the past. Read
more to see how OPUS
works.
Chris Madsen and Liam
Flynn were appointed to
initiate the OPUS program
beginning last July. They have already noted satisfactory improvements in
our organized play games. STC can expect the goal of the program to be
Photos by TJ Duffy
The STC Times 2
reached as more 3.5 and 3.0 players return to SB and join up this fall.
Clearly all men should join. Encourage your friends to do it.
The best tennis always happens when all four players have roughly
equal abilities. OPUS is realistically
designed to reach that goal at every
level of play as soon as the vast majority
of players of all levels join. Players who
agree to join will be doing their part to
reach a goal that has always been the
aim of the STC. To join, just call the
office (825-2525) as soon as possible.
Our coordinators will handle everything
else for you.
Here is how the greatly simplified Men’s OPUS works. Men who have
joined will sign up online as usual for Thursday organized play although
there will be no linking. For the time being regular organized play will
happen on Tuesdays as usual.
Thursday OPUS will include both the 7:00 and 9:00 Organized Play
sessions. If any courts are not used by OPUS, non-OPUS players may sign
up for them as usual. It is
anticipated that OPUS will use
almost every court. So join soon.
Players will use ordinary
scoring and rotate partners on
their court after each set. They will
keep a list of the total number of
games won by each player during
the entire match. The list of totals
will be deposited in a locked box to be tallied by the facilitators. Tallies will
not be made public.
Here is the cool part. On the following Thursday, and all subsequent
Thursdays, the player with the highest number of wins on each court will
The STC Times 3
be ‘moved up’. The player with the fewest wins will be ‘moved down’. Over
a short period of time all players will be matched with similarly skilled
players while meeting new players from other courts every week.
A computer program has been installed to assign courts based on data
from the lists that have been submitted. The process has been fun and has
moved smoothly from the very beginning. So be sure to call the STC
coordinators (825-0255) to notify them that you wish to join Men’s OPUS.
Encourage your friends to join quickly.
Finally, and of great importance,
let Chris and Liam know about any
suggestions you may have to make the
program work even better.
Men’s OPUS. What a great way for
STC to project its dedication to the
health and enjoyment of all
SaddleBrooke residents.�
Editor’s Note
It must be pointed out that Men’s OPUS has benefited from contributions by a
lot of STC members throughout the years. It has appeared in various forms, most
recently, as Ladies OPUS which was instituted by Rebecca Proffitt, Sarah Smith and
Linda Depew in February of last year. One of the major challenges identified at the
end of the first session was the need for a computer program to manage OPUS.
Then in May the beginnings of an enhanced and simplified version of OPUS
was spearheaded by Stephanie Thomas with input and guidance from Rebecca and
Linda as well as from Ginger Riffel and Mary Jo George. After several meetings,
numerous emails and a lot of hard work, the OPUS update was nearly complete. The
icing on the cake was the creation of a new program website for OPUS by David
Loendorf, where all the court assignments, games won/games played, percentages
and ranking could be done and automatically calculated. Joyce Honorof and Karen
Cusano volunteered as our first OPUS monitors. Truly, an STC-member team effort!
