‘Underdog’ 3.5 men’s team earns 6th-place finish at USTA Nationals

R.B. Jones and a couple members of his tennis community decided to attempt to piece together a USTA Missouri 18 & Over 3.5 men’s team earlier this year. The crew asked around—“we just kind of put out a bat signal,” Jones quipped—to see who’d like to join.

Jones’s brother jumped aboard, as did a couple work colleagues and church friends. Jones’s brother-in-law, who lives in northwest Arkansas, said he’d play and could get a couple buddies from his community to join as well.

“We kind of had a realization we’re all ranked at 3.5,” Jones said. “We realized this might be a good chance to call in favors for our spouses and try to see if we can make a run.”

In his first experience playing on a USTA men’s team—let alone captaining one—Jones and his Springfield-based squad went on a spree to win the USTA Missouri Valley Section Championships. The team backed up that result with a strong sixth-place finish at USTA League Nationals, which included a 3-2 victory over a USTA Intermountain squad that ended up winning the national championship.

“When we set out, obviously we didn’t know we were going to make it to nationals,” Jones said. “We just said, ‘Hey, this would be fun to get regular playing time.’ Get together with friends and people we knew we were pretty similarly competitive when we played against each other.”

With playing time for all team members a priority throughout their march to nationals, Jones’s squad didn’t have any subs when they arrived in St. Louis for the Section Championships on Aug. 2-4.

The upper-90s temperatures and extreme humidity didn’t help matters, nor did the team having to play back-to-back matches. The squad eked into a bye after pool play concluded courtesy of a tiebreaker, which Jones called a lifesaver.

“We probably would have died,” Jones said with a laugh. “It was not the way to draw it up. But it was fun. We’ve had experiences in the past where you put all this time in, you take time off work, you go and travel. If the chips fall the other way, you may play one match and your team is out. That was a source of frustration. We all want to play.

“We decided we’d rather do it this way. We don’t care about the ultimate result as much as just getting to participate. That was a fun, unifying theme. ‘Well, this is our team. Who is going to play singles this time?’ We literally rotated through.”

The finals of the Section Championship in St. Louis came down to the fifth line with both teams—as well as other squads who had participated that weekend—gathered to cheer on the singles competitors.

Jones said the match featured plenty of fun banter amongst the nice-sized crowd, with his team offering to buy their teammate a steak dinner if he pulled off the victory. “Win a steak!” they chanted to him between points. The opposing team countered with a chant of their own: “Win his steak!”

“It was just lighthearted, competitive tennis,” Jones said. “It was a lot of fun.”

At nationals in San Diego on Oct. 25-27, Jones’s team opened play by dropping a tight 3-2 decision to USTA NorCal, with the final two courts falling in tiebreaks. The USTA Missouri squad then ripped off three straight wins by the same 3-2 margin against USTA Hawaii, USTA Intermountain and USTA Caribbean.

The crew produced the 3-1 overall record and sixth-place finish despite having just one sub with nine total players in attendance.

“It was a great opportunity,” Jones said. “Most of us didn’t grow up as tennis players. We were athletic, played other sports and have taken to tennis in the last few years. It’s been fun to measure yourself against a different group of competitors. It was very rewarding. It was a fun excuse to go on the trip—a long time to be together with the team—because we are all friends first and tennis players second.”

Many members of the team brought their spouse or girlfriend on the trip to California. Jones—who also participated on a USTA 8.0 mixed team with his wife this year—said he enjoyed watching his team improve throughout the season. His squad was one of three USTA Missouri teams to advance to nationals this year, joining an 18+ 7.0 mixed team and 55+ 7.0 mixed team.

“It felt like an underdog story the whole way,” Jones said. “It was fun to go show that we could in fact compete, to see the reactions of some of the big sections. We look forward to more. It’s a small tennis world, so people we’re going to see again. It was fun to see how we stack up and it was memorable, for sure.”

Follow the results from the USTA League National Championships by clicking here.