Previous Polls

Polls on Rule Changes

You would think that having Captains meetings would be the best way to find out what players really want and be able to make improvements to the league but it doesn't always work that way.
Not that I'm against having Captain's Meetings but typically, only the captains/players with the goal of improving their own teams chances of doing better will show up.
Case in point is the "Ball-in-Hand rule that was instituted by the league that broke off from ours.
The rules in our league, while sometimes complicated, are designed in an attempt to even out a lesser teams chanches of doing well against a better team.
While the Ball-in-Hand rule does have the benefit of making the games go faster, it allows those better teams to purposely hide you in an attempt to gain an advantage over you.
There are some rules that they instituted that do have merit and I'd like to address them here to get an idea if they'd improve our league.
Please take the time to read the proposals below, vote on them and leave any comments that you might want to add.

The starting time rules that were instituted in this league years ago were purposely ambiguous so as to try to insure that a match would get under way at all costs so we could minimize forfeits. While the start time with the current rules states that the match should start by 8:00 PM, there are no real penalties imposed until 8:45 PM. What happens is that there are usually a couple of players from each team waiting to play by 8:00 but they're "waiting" for either their captain or another player before they elect to begin the match. This makes no sense and ends up delaying everyone when there's really no reason to do so. I'm proposing to change that rule to force the match to begin with the players available at 8:15 PM. If there are 2 players from each team available at 8;15, there's really no reason that they can't play at least the first two games of the match and continue onto the 2nd singles set, if necessary, while waiting for their other players to arrive. This would insure that the match began on time and hopefully get the match finished a little earlier than it would had you sat around waiting for other players.

Continuing along the same lines as the proposal above, I'd like to propose that we eliminate the last "Doubles" game.
As it stands now with 2 players allowed to play twice during the Doubles game, many teams play there best 2 players in them which sometimes gives them an advantage to swing the final score in their favor. In eliminating the last Doubles game, the rules would be written so that no player can play twice in the Doubles set making it fairer for everyone involved.
Another benefit would be that the match would end a little earlier so that the players on both teams can get home a little earlier.