World TeamTennis

[Greggulator]

DVDVR has a history of a love of odd/non-mainstream sports leagues. I am throwing World TeamTennis out there for discussion!

This is SUCH a fun league! I just went to my first Philadelphia Freedoms game and it was a total blast. Their court is at Villanova's basketball arena, which is actually really intimate. Venus Williams is on the Washington Kastles and played woman's and mixed doubles. Billy Jean King was also there, which is awesome because she's one of the all-time best human beings. (All sorts of things like Title IX and woman's sports are almost solely due to her. She was also really important to the American gay rights movement. And if you want to get really esoteric, there's an article someone could write that could talk about how stuff like riot grrrl might not have come to be without her, either. But I digress.)

So the matches are set up like this: There are five sets. There's men's and women's singles, men's and women's doubles, and mixed doubles. Each set is up to 5. And instead of 15/30, they just go 1-2-3-4. There are no deuces. You have to play let serves. There are also no tiebreakers at the end of sets.

The scorekeeping isn't based on sets. It's cumulative based on the amount of games one. For example: Philly won something like 20-15 tonight. It was something 5-3, 5-0, 5-2, 2-5 and 3-5. (I think.)

And it went into OVERTIME. They set up a system to make the final set matter even if it's a blow-out.

If the team winning the match wins the fifth set, the match is over no matter what.

But if the team losing wins the fifth set, then overtime occurs. The Kastles tonight would have had to win five games in a row to send it into a 13-point tiebreaker. But the Freedoms just needed to win one game to prevent that from happening, which they did.

Also, they encourage noise and the like. Maybe a little too much since I heard "I Got A Feeling" about 55 times from the god-awful DJ.

But WTT is a total blast and I give it a huge recommendation.

[Super Ape]

What's the crowd like at Nova?  I can't imagine it's TERRIBLY packed, since WTT isn't exactly in the public conscious much.

 

I wish I'd been able to see the Freedoms back when they played at that collapsible stadium they'd set up in the King of Prussia Mall parking lot.  That just seems like a ridiculous undertaking.

[Greggulator]

What's the crowd like at Nova?  I can't imagine it's TERRIBLY packed, since WTT isn't exactly in the public conscious much.

 

I wish I'd been able to see the Freedoms back when they played at that collapsible stadium they'd set up in the King of Prussia Mall parking lot.  That just seems like a ridiculous undertaking.

 

I'd say about 1,500 or so. The crowd decreased slowly through the night as it was HEAVY with kids at the beginning. Venus was also done after her second doubles match so folks who came just to see her filtered out after that.