USTA Humor

Pre season:

Competitive captain:
2 days before the final ratings are supposed to come out look on the computer. Keep checking every hour until they finally do come out. Get all of your former players to sign oaths they are playing for you. Stalk down all of the bump downs and people from other regions and see what you can do to entice them. Of course you don't steal from others as you aren't like captain so and so who did that to you 2 years ago.
Non-competitive captain: casually mention to your players that you are having a team and ask them if they have any friends who want to join. Accept any requests you get to join your team.
Registration time:
Competitive captain: send your team a 3 page email detailing the schedule, the practices, the game plan for the season as well as a desire to stomp that team that beat you last season. Keep sending registration reminders daily. Check the registrations three times a day of your team and the other team and run an analysis on the computer of your team's chances. Freak out and almost have a car crash when one of your key players doesn't sign up.

Non competitive captain Check registrations once in a while. Oh no, it looks like Binkie, the best singles player got bumped up. Oh well.

Match day
Competitive captain:
Run all hypothetical matchups on an app on your iPad figuring out how many points you will take as well as figuring out how many points your rival will take in their opener. Curse out the apple guy when the app crashes. Triple confirm with every player scheduled and make sure their rides are set. Pay the über guy double to get that slacker guy there early.
Non competitive captain: casually send a text to all your players reminding them of the match. Go out and buy some beer and plan on ordering pizza for afterwards. Hope for the best against a notoriously tough team.

The match
Competitive captain: get there two hours early to check out the courts. Because after all, who needs to work. Stalk the parking lot and make note of who arrives redoing your lineup ten times. And who is that guy with red hair? Take a photo of him and run it through an identity search. He must have signed up late. Damn iPhone for freezing. Keep redoing the lineup and curse out tennis Identity search for charging $20.
Non competitive captain: get there 15 minutes before the match. Put the beer in the fridge. Text the one guy not there and hope for the best.
Bring over your lineup to the competitive guy who has now thrown his iPad across the room for messing up the identity program. Offer the guy a beer as he seems stressed. He then accuses you of trying to hurt his chances of winning. Grab a beer yourself and head down to the court.

Competitive captain: recover the ipad you threw across the room. Thank god there's only a few cracks. Ask the ditzy receptionist for the wifi password which she doesn't seem to know. Try to google the red head's name on your iPhone but it's out of power. Head to your car to charge it a bit but the internet doesn't seem to load. Call your research assistant and leave her a Voicemail ordering her to google the red head, Rob Micheli. Then charge your phone a bit more but not too much as you can't miss the match, head back into the tennis club and stare at your phone waiting to hear back from the research assistant while munching on pretzels and pacing. After five minutes the red head is upstairs and he holds his head down and is like, " I lost 60 60. I didn't realize 4.0 was this tough" you shrug your shoulders and are like, “well John Appelbaum is top of the level. You can join my 3.5 team next year" then you breathe a sigh of relief and keep your eyes on that first doubles match that could be close. They don't seem to be changing the score and you have a conniption. The second and third doubles head up and they both won. Then the bell rings, time ran out. It looks like second singles was up 64 53 and first doubles split. Ok, this is acceptable for the first match. You summon everyone over and tell them they better gear up for next week which is a tougher match, you remind them of practice on Friday and tell them your pro, Bridget is available to give the first doubles team lessons on poaching. Then you telephone your research assistant to see if they have any info on the other match taking place.
Non-competitive captain. Head to your court and be ready for a tough match as this team is usually very good. Fight the good fight and feel pleasantly surprised when you split sets and time runs out. Head up to the lobby and get the beers out. Order the pizza and celebrate. Casually remind your team of the practice this Sunday.
Competitive Captain: Frantically telephone your research assistant, who is busy writing a legal brief. She picks up the phone and you bark into the phone, " did Rubin post?". She of course, at first has no clue what you are talking about, but then quickly drops everything and navigates her browser to the already bookmarked USTA site. Keep yelling into the phone, " well". Trying to suppress laughter she says, " they won 22-0". Silently curse your first doubles team while demanding she recite the individual scores. Then order her to meet you at the diner (which is 20 miles from her house) where you will review the results. Use your app and your mathematically oriented brain to calculate the odds of getting first place over Rubin in the division running point scenarios for the remaining matches in the season. Curse the app for crashing and then call your math assistant ( who is an analyst at JP Morgan) and impel him to also meet you at the diner, honk at the guy driving at a little funny and finally go around him as you honk even more. People have places to go and problems to solve. Smash your hand through the diner door as you are so eager to get into the diner and confer with your research assistant and math assistant. Even though your hand is bleeding, once you see the two assistants, "do you think I should cut larry and jake from the team. They split with Doug and Vlad who are really only 3.7 players. Maybe Larry and Jake aren't top 8." Then freak out when you see that that guy Romanoff who you were trying to recruit has signed up on the Rubin roster. He said he didn't' have any time to play for any team. Damn him.
Non-competitive captain: Decide to stay a little later and drink a few more beers than usual with your buddies. Mmm, this pizza is good. You are happy that you were able to split with a team that made regionals last year. As your buddies start to pack up, contemplate going to a titty bar. After all tomorrow isn't your early day at work and you played well. Hopefully your wife wont mind you getting in a little late. Get in the car and turn on your favorite song as you bop up and down with the music on full blast. The car zig zags a little but you don't care, you had a great match. Man, that overhead you put away to win the second set felt good. Then, your ears start to ring and you notice the guy behind you honking. When did people get so intense? You decide you are a little drunk and better get home before you end up in jail with a dui.