Will my USTA League NTRP rating be bumped up or down this year? How many are bumped up or down each year?

It is late September and with that most if not all sections have held their playoffs and determined who will be going to USTA League Nationals in October and November. Some sections have Fall leagues that count towards NTRP ratings calculations, but for most players, all of their league play is complete and the matches that will affect their rating have been played.

That means that we can start taking a look at how many players are likely to be bumped up or down. But first, lets look at some statistics on bumps from last year.

This chart shows the percentage of players bumped up, staying at level, and bumped down by level.

Not surprisingly we see the most bump ups occurred from 2.5 and the most bump downs from 5.5. But in the 3.5 thru 4.5 levels where the bulk of league tennis is played, there were remarkably few bumps last year with just 7.6%, 4.9%, and 3.6% being bumped up and 3.7%, 5.0%, and 6.9% being bumped down. That means right around 89-90% stayed at their level for 3.5s thru 4.5s.  Overall, about 87% of C/B rated players stayed the same at year-end.

So, what about this year? Year-end ratings obviously aren't out yet, they won't be until December 1st in all likelihood, but I can use the ratings I calculate for Estimated Dynamic NTRP Rating Reports to make a pretty good guess as to what the bump percentages will look like.

The predicted 2014 chart doesn't look radically different from the 2013 chart. What stands out the most is probably the increase across the board of bump downs but the bump ups have increased too.

In the 3.5 thru 4.5 levels the bump ups are 10.4%, 6.7%, and 5.2% while the bump downs are 7.5%, 9.0%, and 11.4%. This means just 82-84% are staying at level.

Are my estimates perfect? No, but they were about 95% accurate at year-end last year so it will be interesting to see how closely what I've calculated above matches what actually happens at year-end.

And of course, if you don't want to wait for December 1st to find out if you will be bumped up, my reports will give you a very good idea of where you will end up, so contact me if you'd like to get a report and find out.

Note that I'm using dynamic ratings for the 2014 analysis above, and year-end ratings will incorporate benchmark calculations as a result of Nationals and tournament results in sections that include them. Plus the USTA could elect to do manual overrides or mass bumps up/down as they did a few years ago. But I do comment in reports I do on how the year-end calculations may affect a player's rating.

What do you think, will 2014 be a bit more volatile than 2013 was?