“Honor our Game - Protect Traditional Scoring!!!” The depth of the tennis scoring system has inspired and challenged players for 143 years. Benchmarks and barometers for excellence during that time have been set by it’s accuracy. It is unmatched in sport for it’s fairness to advance credible champions. It is a most precious heirloom. We must protect it. Please consider the following: 1. Traditional scoring is a fair, accurate and time-tested barometer for the many skill-sets that it takes to win in tennis. Skills to overcome ‘pecking orders’ and to go through the normal ‘rites-of-passages,’ for tennis levels have been assessed by consistent measurement for over a hundred years. These give critical guidelines for player development. Randomness and skewed results greatly harm developmental process. 2. Tennis is a game of simultaneous scoring opportunity for both offense and defensive postures. Thus, the need to win by 2 points instead of one per-game is paramount!! Every 7th point of no-ad has harmful double-jeopardy value and is an 8-point swing. (eg. This overloaded value is easily understood when the set-score is 4-2 and one point makes it either 5-2 or 4-3; Game point at 4-4 shows the overload very well.) Sadly, the chance of bad line-calls are enhanced because such weight is given to the 7th point of the game. 3. Fitness is a Corner-stone for Success in Tennis. Abbreviations to traditional scoring dilute and minimize the elements of conditioning and endurance of mind, body and spirit; therefore, results are often skewed. When need for fitness is reduced or eliminated the need for good training regimens are reduced as well. 4. Conversion Point (3-in-a-row) mastery is a critical skill-set for success in traditional scoring – The length of every game in no-ad scoring is 4-7 points and requires the winning of only 1 point in a row for success. A great void to tennis developmental process is that ‘War-zone endurance’ is not taught by no-ad. 5. Abbreviated scoring promotes random momentum swings and neutralizes the small differences that become big advantages in the better player’s skill-base when traditional scoring is used. The Match Momentum that is hard-earned by the better player is minimized and easily overturned by no-ad scoring. 6. Point Construction and a well-rounded game are highlighted by Traditional Scoring. No-ad accelerates false parity between levels without the deeper mastery of skill-sets usually required for advancement. Abbreviated scoring rewards ball-striking skill more than Point-construction skills. Smaller players and players of less athletic skill-set are greatly disadvantaged by no-ad scoring. 7. Traditional Scoring produces great drama in the closing out of each game, set and match. The bi-product of great drama is heightened excitement. No-ad and abbreviated scoring dilute these opportunities for drama as one false crescendo after another is manipulated by the scoring system and not by skill-sets. 8. Players and Coaches want to play regulation tennis! They want to play the same system that professionals have used for 143 years so that wins are credible and losses are learning situations. Players and coaches do not want to mark improvements nor gain important rites-of-passage that are manipulated by hybrid scoring methods. 9. No-Ad is not a rule of tennis and it has been forced into the game without consensus of coaches and players. No-ad was invented as a novelty experiment during the tennis boom of the 1970s. There was no research done before its implementation into competitive arena. Although it has been marketed as a ‘Time-Saver,’ It’s real purpose has been to produce random results while creating immediate parity. 10. Every tennis player and every coaches has the duty to Honor the History and Heritage of Tennis! Please Do Your Part to Protect and to Promote Traditional Scoring….Ask our tennis leaders to do the Same!!!