Herb Cup Invitational (Top 8 Doubles) @ Stanford University

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Taube Family Tennis Stadium
625 Campus Dr
Stanford, CA 94305

This one-day event has been hosted by USTA NorCal for 10 years as an invitational event only. The Herb Cup is named in honor of Peter Herb, who was the Executive Director of USTA NorCal for 40 years, and his family. He was extremely creative and was responsible for many innovations in both junior and adult tennis. He introduced the concept of having different levels of play for juniors and then extended that to adult tennis.

The event features the top eight NorCal junior players in doubles in the 18, 16, 14, 12, and 10 divisions. In each division, four doubles teams compete against each other in a unique round-robin format. Each team plays the other three teams for exactly 40 minutes, recording how many games each team loses when time is called. After three rounds, the doubles team with the least amount of games lost is the winner.

Each player will receive a NorCal 2015 Herb Cup sweatshirt and player gifts for participating in the event. Snacks and drinks will be provided throughout the event. There is no entry fee for this event.

By having a fun, season-ending doubles event, it inspires our NorCal juniors to participate in doubles throughout the year. This is the ninth year that we’ve offered the Herb Cup, and it’s a big part of why we have seen a big increase in doubles participation. The kids and their parents always look forward to the Herb Cup, and they get very excited when they get invited to participate.

Doubles improves the major components of the singles game, namely the serve, return, volley, and forward movement which is something that is seldom worked on in singles. You will also develop softer hands and quicker reflexes around the net making you a well-rounded player. Playing doubles forces you to pick your shots as they are open. Instead of just hitting the ball to the other side of the court you must hit a cross court, ally, or lob thus making you work on placing your shots and see them when they're open.

We want to run the entire event in just a day. In today’s lifestyle, this works best. Rather than having kids spend eight hours playing two or three matches, with hours of waiting, the kids get to play three matches within five hours, with 45-minute break in between matches to talk over strategies and hang out with friends while other divisions play. Every new round is a new opponent, with the air horn pressed to signal the end of each period and all matches will have to stop once it’s blown. It’s important to innovate and try new formats.

For Yellow Ball divisions, the top eight boys and girls in doubles for 12s, 14s, 16s and 18s are selected. New Doubles Ranking Lists will be published after October 4th, and those lists will be used for selection for Yellow Ball divisions. For Orange and Green Ball divisions, players are selected based on the most number of doubles matches won in Orange and Green Ball tournaments.

Players selected will be invited by USTA NorCal staff via email. Each player selects his/her doubles partner within the eight players of their age division. Players without a partner will be randomly paired up.

Players will not receive ranking points for matches in this event. This is a fun event to celebrate the hard work and achievements that our top NorCal players have put in all year long for their results and rankings.