We are now entering the final weekend of an ongoing series examining how rules are made, communicated, interpreted, and enforced in USTA League play. This series of posts has used the recent suspensions of two players in the Dallas area as a springboard for thought and discussion. Each topic in this series has isolated one foundational principle of fair governance. This installment focuses on proportionality. In plain terms, the punishment has to fit the crime.
As a refresher, this principle was framed out this way when I made my first post that outlined the series:
The Punishment Has to Fit the Infraction. Penalties should be commensurate with the offense, and discipline in amateur sport should prioritize education over retribution. Severe sanctions should be reserved for severe misconduct, while honest errors should not trigger disproportionate consequences. When penalties outpace the underlying behavior, the system creates a perception of arbitrary injustice.
To understand why the suspensions imposed in this case feel so out of proportion, it is useful to look directly at the USTA League Suspension Point System itself. The player at the center of this saga was initially assessed twenty-four suspension points for violating a local league rule. That number matters because it sits at the top end of the USTA League suspension table and triggers a full-year USTA suspension. It is instructive to examine other behaviors deemed equivalent in severity within that framework.
The most prominent example is physical violence. Under the Sportsmanship category, which applies both to players and to people associated with a player, the only conduct that rises to 24 suspension points is physical violence against another person, whether on or off the court. That is the only form of misconduct in that category that earns 24 suspension points. It is difficult to reconcile that benchmark with the notion that a local eligibility question belongs in the same penalty class.
Another category in the USTA League Suspension Point Table where 24-point penalties are defined, falls under the “Extreme Circumstances” category. Three infractions rise to that level, including misrepresenting scores, misrepresenting identity, and playing while suspended. The last of these is tangentially relevant to our case study because the player who was suspended failed to detect that detail when she was first suspended. As discussed in the due process post last weekend, the lack of clarity stemmed from truncated text fields in the grievance form, exacerbated by the compressed timelines. It was sheer luck that she was not scheduled to play any USTA matches during that time, and possibly unwittingly tacking on an additional year to her punishment.
The only other place in the USTA League Suspension Point system where a 24-point infraction is defined falls under the “General” category. That one is “Failing to comply with a USTA League Regulation or Guideline or Championship Procedure,” which carries a range of 2 to 24 suspension points. That entry includes no examples, gradations, or guidance on how to evaluate severity. That absence of definition creates a vast discretionary gap, one that can turn minor infractions into significant penalties.
It is also not at all clear that failure to comply with a regulation or guideline includes rules that are implemented solely at the local league level. If local rules fall under this umbrella, that is a powerful argument for requiring a formal review process to ensure they are consistent with National and Sectional regulations. Absent that, it is still a case for establishing reasonable caps on penalties arising from purely local rule violations.
Looking back at the initial player grievance form, it appears that the local league administrator was trying to align the suspension points with the historical penalty for violating the Dallas rule in question, which was a one-year local suspension. The problem is that the broader framework had changed. The new Sectional-level suspension rule expanded the consequences from local to National scope, and the Section’s league coordinators were (apparently) directed to use the USTA Suspension Point System to enforce local penalties. The problem is at that point, the penalty is no longer local. There is a universe of difference between being suspended from one local area for violating a local rule and escalating that to a full National suspension.
As a refresher, the rule in question essentially amounts to a local area being mad at a player who prioritized their post-season play in favor of another city. In a system that actively encourages players to register for the same division on multiple days, encountering a prioritization conflict between two adjacent areas seems like a natural side occurence rather than a flagrant offense.
Additionally, there is a related stacking issue to note. To reach 24 suspension points, the player was charged with three separate 8-point violations, one for each playoff match she played. That sets a dangerous precedent. Eligibility is fundamentally a binary condition. A player is either eligible or ineligible. Playing while unknowingly ineligible is not meaningfully different, whether it occurred once or repeatedly, unless the player was notified of ineligibility and continued anyway. That did not happen here.
This per-instance charging approach also creates perverse incentives. Under this logic, a strong team could reach the playoff finals, use an ineligible player once there, and incur only eight suspension points if that became the match-by-match norm. In contrast, a player who unknowingly participated earlier and throughout the playoffs would face a full-year suspension. Enterprising captains will perform that calculus immediately and act accordingly if that becomes the standard.
One of the most painful aspects of this saga is that both the player and the captain were told they could avoid any penalty if the player switched her Sectional registration to Dallas and they both wrote apology letters. They did exactly that. Despite those actions, they still received the maximum suspension points. From their perspective, it felt like they were made to grovel with no real intent to modify the outcome. I personally believe that it is more likely that the local administrator (who, as mentioned in an earlier post, was brand new to the position) was receiving inconsistent guidance from people who themselves possessed varying levels of knowledge of the existence, implementation, and impact of the new Sectional suspension rule that is at the heart of this unfortunate series of events.
A slightly broader context further illustrates the core challenge. Both Dallas and Fort Worth currently have local rules designed to force players to choose their area if they advance to Sectionals. Because those seasons frequently overlap geographically and temporally, when combined with local rules, a player can be suspended by Dallas for prioritizing Fort Worth or by Fort Worth for opting for Dallas. In essence, one local area can punish a player for doing exactly what another local area is demanding that they do. The rational response for a player caught in that bind would be to skip Sectionals altogether, which is a deeply perverse outcome for a program designed to encourage participation.
One of the impacted parties summed up the shift perfectly when we were exchanging messages earlier this week. I am paraphrasing this slightly for clarity and flow, but the substance is intact. Until the national suspensions were levied against the player and the captain, everyone in the DFW area believed that players in this position were choosing which city they might get in trouble with, and that the consequences were strictly local. That is no longer true. The penalties to players and captains are now far more severe.
That observation captures the core opportunity for improvement. Local rules historically carried local consequences. This case transformed a local eligibility spat between two playing areas into a National-scope suspension without clear rules definition, proportionality, or warning. Examining whether the punishment fits the crime is not a technical exercise. It goes to the heart of whether this implementation of the system is fair and aligned with its stated purpose.
I will drive this point home in Sunday’s concluding post, but the takeaway here is straightforward. Local rules should have local consequences. They should only rise to Sectional or National penalties when a Sectional or National rule is actually violated. In the meantime, the custodians of the USTA League Suspension Point System should strongly consider adding clarity, examples, and caps to address how local rule violations fit, or do not fit, within that framework.
The bottom line is this: In terms of the penalties assessed, one-year suspensions were excessively harsh, but so too are the 3-month suspensions received on appeal. This should serve as a wake-up call for the caretakers of the USTA League rules and regulations at all levels to step back and examine ways to implement structural changes and guardrails to ensure that all players and administrators have access to a clear and consistent set of rules, along with a punitive framework that prevents things from going as far off the rails as it did in this case.
References
- 2025 USTA League National Regulations & Texas Operating Procedures, USTA Texas Document, Version 01.06.25.
- USTA League Suspension Point System 2025, USTA National Document, Dated 4/1/25
- USTA Dallas Local League Rules & Regulations, As of Championship Year 2025. This is a previous personal download, and I cannot find a current version online.
- USTA Dallas Adult Leagues Captain’s Responsibilities, Dallas Tennis Association Informational Document, Dated 1/5/24. (Accessed and downloaded 12/14/2025 in preparation for this post.)
- 2026 USTA League National Regulations, USTA National, dated 12/14/2025.