Summary of USTA NTRP meeting in Seattle - A few new regulations in the works!

The PNW NTRP ratings meetings I wrote about a few weeks ago happened this week and I was able to attend the one held in Seattle (Bellevue).  I believe a recording was done in Seattle and it may be made available, but I thought it would still be useful for me to write a quick summary and some observations.

Before I start though, thanks to USTA National for sending Heather out and to the PNW section and Adam and Jill for setting it up and making it happen.

Attendance in Seattle was a bit less than I'd expected, and less than I understand attended in Portland.  Seattle USTA League players, where were you?!  However, those that attended were vocal and had plenty of questions.

Heather Hawkes from USTA National was the main speaker and Adam Hutchinson, the Section League Coordinator in the PNW was there too.  Heather went through a very informative presentation on the background behind the NTRP system and how it works, and some myths and misconceptions to boot.  Everything I heard was consistent with what I've shared with folks over the years and have documented in my FAQ.

There were a lot of questions about ratings and the USTA publishing dynamic ratings to the hundredths, but it seems pretty clear that is not in the works.  The sites that publish (woefully inaccurate) ratings lists were discussed and the USTA definitely does not endorse or encourage their use, and Heather pointed out a lot of the reasons for this and the problems those sites cause.  She also mentioned my blog you are reading here and said a few nice things about it (thanks Heather!).

A couple things were mentioned that were new as it relates to some National and PNW regulations changes that will happen or are being considered for 2019.  I preface this with the disclaimer that while this was mentioned in a public forum and I believe is all accurate, the regulations have not been published yet and until they are, nothing is official.

First, I've written before about the National rules in place for players 60 and older, or 65 and older to automatically appeal their rating down if they are bumped up at year-end.  These basically say that players 60 & older can auto-appeal down regardless of how high their rating is, if they had been at the lower level for three consecutive years without appealing.  And those 65 & older can auto-appeal down period if they are bumped up.

Well, that is changing for 2019.  The general rules are still the same, but there is a qualifier that a player may not be at the 'clearly above level' and still be able to appeal.  The 'clearly above level' is basically the strike threshold and is higher than the top of the level (to allow for some improvement), and the purpose of this rule is to prevent players who, even in their 60s, have put in the work and been able to improve and are clearly able to play at the higher level, from appealing down as letting them play at the lower level isn't fair to the other players at the level nor in the spirit of the purpose of NTRP based league play.

This change is a change nationally so will apply to all players, and I'm all for it.  It prevents the rule that is in place to allow seniors to appeal down from being abused.

Second, as I also wrote about before, there are some leagues or flights that use a points per position scoring for team matches.  What this means is that rather than winning or losing a team match by winning more courts than the other team (e.g. 3-2, 4-1, 5-0), and having standings based on team won/loss record, points are assigned to each court and you simply accrue points for the courts you win, and the standings are based on those accrued points.

The purpose of this scoring is to encourage teams to play their better players on court 1 by having a greater points incentive there than on court 2 and 3, the idea being that it can help combat situations where teams will stack their line-up or sacrifice a weak player on court 1 leading to an uncompetitive, and frankly unsatisfying match, for both players.

This has been used in a few areas the past few years, the Eastern section for one, and apparently it may be coming to the PNW section to be piloted in the 40 & Over 4.5+ league.  I don't know that the points assignment has been determined, but in Eastern they use 5 points for court 1 singles and 4 points for court 2, then 6, 4, and 3 points for courts 1 thru 3 doubles.  This means 22 points are up for grabs in each match and it doesn't really matter if you win more courts or not, just that you accrue points.

Adam said that it is being proposed for the 40 & Over 4.5+ flights because there have been complaints of teams sacrificing weak players on court 1.  I understand the rationale for trying points per position, but I'm not sure it is going to have the desired effect.  See what I wrote before for more details, but it will certainly change the dynamic about the matches and how you win your flight and make playoffs and take away the onus of winning the team match.  And when teams know they can't beat the other team's best player, it still won't result in the weaker team choosing to play their best player on court 1.  But I'll reserve judgement and see how it works in 2019, and from what I've heard those areas that have been using like it.

Were you at the meeting?  Anything I missed or what did you think?

Update: The video from the meeting is available, see details here.