Analyzing 2021 USTA NTRP year-end ratings - An initial look at some high level stats

2021 year-end ratings are out, so now we can begin looking at some stats.

First, by my calculations over 251K players received a year-end rating, which is up slightly from 2019 when 245K did.  This is probably a good thing as any growth is good, but keep in mind 2021 included two years of play (albeit pandemic affected in 2020) so we aren't exactly comparing apples to apples.

Breaking this out by gender, women with year-end ratings rose from 150K in 2019 to 153K in 2021, and the men went from 94K to 98K.

Looking at bump rates, overall 6.5% of players were bumped down while 9.7% were bumped up.  This compares to 2019's 4.9% down and 10.5% up.

Breaking this out by gender, women had bump down/up rates of 6.1% and 10.6% which compares with 2019's 5.3% and 9.2%.  The men had 7.3% down and 7.9% up compared to 2019's 4.0% down and 12.9% up.

Stay tuned for more stats in the coming days.

2021 year-end NTRP ratings have been published!

It has been much anticipated, and has finally happened, the USTA has published year-end ratings for 2021!  As I write this, there are at least some players with 2021 year-end ratings on TennisLink.

When the USTA did not publish ratings for 2020 year-end, it created a backlog of players that were probably at the wrong level, and after waiting an extra year we now get to see how the ratings have played out and how players have been bumped up or down.

To check what your rating is, you can go to TennisLink and look yourself up, or login and it should show your rating.  Make sure to check the date and that it is 12/31/2021 as that is what all new ratings should show.  If it still says a different date, yours may not be updated yet, or you didn't play enough matches to get a new rating.

Stay tuned for analysis of the ratings, but if anyone has any questions or wants to get a report to understand why they were/weren't bumped up or down, contact me!  And I'm always interested in situations where players successfully appeal, so if you do that and it is granted, drop me a note.

I'll be doing my usual analysis in the next few days, looking at general bump rates, then drilling in by gender and level and section (those links to 2019's analysis) to see what we can tell about how the USTA handled things this time around.  So stay tuned!

2021 Southern Combo Sectionals are this weekend - Get a simulation report!

While USTA League Nationals are over, and ratings are due out in days, USTA League playoffs continue, and in the Southern section is holding it's Combo League Sectionals this weekend.

More and more sections are adopting the unflighted round-robin format and it appears it is being used for Combo Sectionals, which makes it fun for me as that is when my simulation reports are useful and give an idea how balanced the schedules are and who is most likely to advance to the semis.

I've already done one simulation report for one of the levels at the event, if you are interested in getting one yourself, let me know!

2021 year-end NTRP ratings are being calculated, when will they be published?

2021 USTA League Nationals are over, and that means 2021 year-end NTRP ratings are now being calculated.  I've confirmed the cut-off date for matches this year was November 14th so everything should be in and calculations can commence.

I don't know the specifics of the process the USTA goes through at year-end, but believe that National does the calculations, taking the final dynamic rating for all players and then doing their year-end calculations to factor in what happened at Nationals and filter that back down through the sections.  I understand sections/districts may be given preliminary ratings to review, presumably to look for gross errors or things that seem out of whack so those can be researched and a determination made on if/how to correct or adjust things.

So when will it all be done and ratings published?  The date that seems to be out there this year is December 1st and this would be consistent with past years where the ratings generally come out the week after Thanksgiving and 12/1 would be the Wednesday after Thanksgiving this year.  Could they come out a little earlier or later than that date?  Sure, but my guess is the ratings will begin to show up late the night before, or right around 12:00 AM ET on 12/1.

It will be interesting to see what happens this time around, I've already written a bit about what might happen and why, and I'll likely write some more using my ratings as a predictor of what could happen.  But this is an odd year with a 2-year rating period and more matches played than normal, so it might not exactly fit the profile of prior years.

If you can't wait the two weeks for ratings to come out, or are just interested in seeing a detailed breakdown of how you did in 2020/2021, I continue to do my Estimated Dynamic NTRP Rating Reports that uses the ratings I calculate that give what has historically been a pretty accurate correlation with what the USTA publishes.  If you are interested, contact me at ratings@teravation.net.

What might the results from 2021 USTA League Nationals mean for year-end bumps? And why did some sections do so well?

I took a look at how each section did at Nationals, both at a high level and by division, and several sections did very well, Southern, SoCal, and Florida topped the list, while others struggled to make the semis more than a couple of times.  One logical question is why it can be so lopsided, and another is what it might mean for year-end ratings?

On the first question, I think there are several contributing factors.

One is that some sections just have more densely populated areas, so more players to pull from, so it isn't necessarily that a top 4.0 in section A is better than a top 4.0 in section B, rather section A just has more top 4.0s to form teams from and so they are a deeper team.

Another is that the road to Nationals for some sections is more grueling than others, and the team that survives and advances is more battle tested and prepared for Nationals and able to pull out the close matches.  Southern teams for example generally have to go through local playoffs, State playoffs where it is multiple flights leading to semis and a final, and then Sectionals where it is against multiple flights leading to semis and a final.  Many other sections may only have two rounds of playoffs, and a given round may involve just round-robin, or two small flights and a final.  Less matches in pressure situations may not prepare a team for Nationals as well.

It is also possible that despite the USTA's best intentions, their year-end benchmarking doesn't perfectly level the playing field across the sections.  For example, at 2019 year-end, Southern had a large number of players bumped up, but then in something of a reversal, suddenly a lot of players were able to appeal down.  It may be that the mass bump up was justified and would have leveled the playing field, but allowing the appeals tilted things in Southern's direction again.

But another big factor this year is that this is a 2-year rating period and there were no bumps in 2020.  This means there are players that had two years to improve and be clearly out of level now, but still be eligible to play at their 2019 year-end level at Nationals.  While this could happen in any section, it is more likely to happen in sections where more tennis could be played year-round, for example where COVID restrictions didn't close indoor courts for periods, and guess what, Southern, SoCal, and Florida certainly fit this definition.

What do you think?  Why did some sections do significantly better than others this year?

On to the next question of what all this means for 2021 year-end ratings.

I already wrote about Intermountain's success in the 18 & Over division, particularly for the women, and that that might mean more bump ups in the section than normal.  For the same reason, Southern, SoCal, and Florida very well could expect to see more bump ups than normal.

We know the USTA, whether with an override or as part of the normal year-end calculations, tends to have higher bump rates for sections that do well at Nationals, and in some years some sections are hit hard in what appears to be attempt to level the playing field.

What is unknown is if the USTA will feel compelled to make any adjustments this year with the 2-year rating period, or exactly how the 2-year rating period will affect things, or if things will just change organically.

My League Coordinator has already notified captains in our league starting in January that are now forming teams that they may expect more players to be bumped up than normal due to the 2-year rating period.  If that is true as a baseline, and sections that did well at Nationals get an even higher rate, we may see some "interesting" bump rates in two weeks when ratings are published.

What have you heard, or what do you think will happen?

A finer grained look at 2021 USTA League Nationals results by section - Who did the best in each division?

I wrote earlier today a high level summary of how the different sections did at Nationals, and it certainly wasn't balanced.  Southern, SoCal, and Florida, along with Midwest and Intermountain, had significantly better results than the other sections.

In the earlier post, I broke it down as far as men/women/mixed, but now I'll go further and break it down by different divisions.  A few other sections did well, but overall the big-5 still appear the most.

For 18 & Over, here is the full breakdown.

The women were led by Intermountain making the semis in 5 of 6 events and making the final twice.  No championship, but their 11 points bettered New England who only made the semis twice, but too the championship each time.  Southern did well with 7 points just ahead of Midwest, Mid-Atlantic, and Florida.

For the men, Southern led making 4 of 5 semis and garnering 9 points which just beat out the Intermountain men making 2 semis and coming away with two titles.  Missouri Valley led a group just behind along with Mid-Atlantic, Midwest, PNW, and Southwest.

For 40 & Over, here is the full breakdown.

The women were led by Florida and Southern Cal with 2 semis and 6 points apiece across the 4 events.  Midwest, Northern Cal, and PNW also had good showings.

The men saw Midwest and Texas garner 7 points across 2 semis each, Middle States and Eastern did well too.

For 55 & Over, here is the full breakdown.

The women saw Florida not only make 4 semis, but made all the finals and took 3 titles home!  Southern Cal had a very respectable 8 points making 3 semis but was well back.

But the Southern Cal men made all the finals and took 2 titles home to better Southern who made 4 semis and got one title.

Last, here is the full breakdown for Mixed.

In 18 & Over, Southern Cal stood out making 4 of the 5 semis and garnering 10 points, well ahead of Intermountain and Northern Cal.  Midwest and Southern were close behind those two.

The 40 & Over had Mid-Atlantic make 3 of the 4 semis, but Florida made 2 semis and won both titles to lead in points.  Texas also did well making 2 finals and winning 1.

What do you think?  What does this say about all the sections?

2021 USTA League Nationals Summary - Southern, SoCal, and Florida Dominate

2021 USTA League Nationals ended this past Sunday with 40 & Over Mixed, which means we can look at a summary of all of the events.

For this summary I'm looking at the number of times each section made the semis, and then points accumulation where 4 points are awarded for 1st, 3 for 2nd, 2 for 3rd, and 1 for 4th.

The overall leader for semis appearances is Southern making the semis in an astonishing 20 of 36 events.  Not far behind is Southern California with 16 semis appearances, and Intermountain, Midwest, Florida, and Mid-Atlantic were all in doubles digits with 12 or 13.

But if we go by points accumulation, the overall leader is SoCal and Southern, both with 45 points.  While SoCal didn't make the semis as often, when they did, they did well.  Florida and Midwest were not far behind at 40 and 37, then Intermountain is next at 30 and Texas makes an appearance at 24.

Broken down by gender though, Florida is the clear leader for the women with 8 semis and 26 points, with SoCal (6/15), Midwest (5/14), Intermountain (6/13), and Southern (6/12) next in line.

For the men, Southern leads with 10 semis and 24 points, with Midwest (6/17), SoCal (5/16), and Intermountain (4/10) also in double digit points.

Last, in Mixed, SoCal leads with 5 semis and 14 points, with Florida (3/11), Southern (4/9), and Texas (3/9) next in line.

No section went home completely blanked, Caribbean and Hawaii brought up the rear but both made the semis twice and garnered 4 points.

Here is the full table, the leader in each category (row) is in green.

More to come.

Update: See a finer grained breakdown of the events by division by section.

The USTA recaps USTA League Nationals with "up close and personal" stories across the sections

The 2021 USTA League Nationals finished yesterday with the 40 & Over Mixed events being contested, and this morning in my inbox was an e-mail from the USTA recapping the six weeks with a number of stories across the sections.  The stories, at least those I read, are not and detailed review of an event but instead a look at the background or softer side stories about the teams that advanced.

The stories seem to be authored by the sections and some were more prolific than others.  Here is a count by section.

• Midwest - 5
• Mid-Atlantic - 5
• MoValley - 5
• Southern - 4
• Eastern - 4
• New England - 2
• National - 1
• Middle States - 1

Come on USTA, there are more than seven sections!  Where are the stories from the other 10?  Did they all choose not to participate?

The stories are a nice touch though, give them a read.

Results from the sixth and last weekend of 2021 USTA League Nationals - How did the predictions do?

The sixth weekend of 2021 USTA League Nationals is complete, and it is time for the summary and check on how the predictions did.

This weekend was only 40 & Over Mixed with the 6.0 and 9.0 levels being played in Orlando and the 7.0 and 8.0 levels in Surprise.

The 6.0 level had Texas, PNW, Southern, and Mid-Atlantic make the semis, the first three at 4-0 with Mid-Atlantic being the pick of a 4-way tie at 3-1.  The simulation had three of these in its top-7, but PNW was the surprise.  The semis has Texas and Southern winning with Texas taking the title.

At 7.0, SoCal, Southwest, MoValley, and Middle States made the semis, the first two at 3-0 and the next two in a 4-way tie at 3-1.  This was unexpected as just SoCal was in the simulation's top-4.  But the simulation was right in SoCal being the strongest of those that made it as they faced off against Southwest in the final and won it 3-0.

The 8.0 level saw New England, Florida, Mid-Atlantic, and Eastern advance, the first two at 4-0 and another 4-way tie at 3-1.  These teams were all in the top-9 of the simulation and three expected to be in it at 3-1.  Eastern and Florida won their semis with Florida taking the title.

Last, at 9.0, Florida, Texas, Middle States, and Mid-Atlantic made the semis, two at 4-0 and the other two in a 3-way tie at 3-1.  Three of these teams were in my simulation's top-5.  Florida and Texas won the semis and Florida took the title.

Congratulations to the champs!

So that's a wrap for Nationals.  The next big "event" is year-end ratings should be published right around two weeks from now on/around December 1st.  Stay tuned for more on that!

The last 2021 USTA League Nationals are this weekend - 40 & Over Mixed all at once

We've made it through Adult Nationals including 18 & Over, 40 & Over, and 55 & Over, and 18 & Over Mixed Nationals wrapped up their two weekends of events last week, and now we come to the last weekend of Nationals as 40 & Over Mixed plays all four of their levels in one weekend.

The levels are split across two locations, the 7.0 and 8.0 being played in Surprize, AZ (the 7th straight weekend of hosting Nationals!) while the 6.0 and 9.0 will be in Orlando (only the 4th straight weekend).

For those saying "what about 65 & Over and Tri-Level, don't they count?", you would be correct they have not been played yet, but technically those are "Invitationals" and not normal Nationals.

The Tri-Level event is scheduled for March 4-6 in Rancho Mirage, CA making for a fun trip to the California desert during the Indian Wells event, while the 65 & Over event will be held over three weekends in late January and early February in Surprise, AZ.

Good luck to all those playing this weekend!

Is Intermountain going to bear the brunt of the USTA's 2021 bump ups?

At year-end when the USTA does their year-end ratings and players are bumped up or down, not all sections are treated equally.  Some sections get far more bump ups than others, see the analysis I did at the end of 2019 and 2018 where you can see the bump rates can vary significantly by section.

One might wonder, what is this based on?  Why would the USTA bump up a lot more players in one section than another?

The answer is the year-end calculations the USTA does try to level the playing field across all of the sections, so that a 3.5 in Southern California is relatively the same as a 3.5 in New England, or a 4.0 in Southern is relatively the same as a 4.0 in Northern.

A key factor in the year-end calculations is how each section does at Nationals.  If one section does really well at Nationals, that is probably an indication that their players are stronger than players in other sections and to level things, more bump ups may be in order.  In the past Southern, PNW, Caribbean, and Texas have all been sections to get abnormally high bump up rates, and this generally correlates with how the section did at Nationals.

So who is in line to get the big bump up rates in a month when year-end ratings come out?

Intermountain appears to be a key candidate.  Here is how they did at 18 & Over Nationals:

• 18 & Over 2.5 women - semis
• 18 & Over 3.0 women - finals
• 18 & Over 3.0 men - champs
• 18 & Over 3.5 women - finals
• 18 & Over 3.5 men - 8th
• 18 & Over 4.0 women - 14th
• 18 & Over 4.0 men - champs
• 18 & Over 4.5 women - semis
• 18 & Over 4.5 men - 7th
• 18 & Over 5.0 women - semis
• 18 & Over 5.0 men - 8th

In a full 7 out of 11 events Intermountain made at least the semis, made the final 4 times, and won twice.

In 40 & Over, it wasn't as clearly dominant, but in the 8 events there were 2 that made the semis and two others finished 5th.

Who knows what will happen with the USTA dealing with a 2-year rating period, but my guess is Intermountain may get and justify a higher than normal number of bump ups, certainly at several levels.

What do you think?

A review of 40 & Over 4 court format - And PNW abandons points per position for 40 & Over for 2022

In my area (Seattle) our 40 & Over league gets started right away in January and as such the League Coordinator has been sending out reminders about getting teams signed up and whatnot.  In a message today, it was noted that for 2022, our 40 & Over league will no longer use points per position scoring but instead revert back to teams wins, and associated tie-breakers, for determining standings.

As a reminder, my section (PNW) went to this format when the 40 & Over league switched to the 4-court format which brought 2-2 ties into play, as points per position and standings based on accumulated points allows weighting courts so a 2-2 tie on the court isn't a 2-2 tie in points, and it also removes the team win from being a factor in the standings.  This was necessary as at the time the 4-court format was introduced, the National regulations did not say what would happen if there were a 2-2 tie that was tied on all the published tie-breakers.  And it was occurring before National clarified the rules.

While some sections have used, and will continue to use, points per position for leagues regardless of the number of course, apparently those in my area responded to a survey saying they were not in favor of it and PNW listened and is changing back.  I personally didn't mind points per position, I just considered it "different", but I expect folks will be more comfortable with the traditional way of doing standings.

But that begs the question of how 2-2 ties will now work?

The answer is it will work using the tie-breaker that National put in place after 2020 40 & Over leagues started when they discovered they hadn't accounted for everything, and that is that if the teams are still tied after the sets lost and games lost tie-breakers are applied, the winner of the team match will be the team that won court 1 doubles.

In the message received today, it was noted that the court 1 doubles winner would be the last tie-breaker, and also made the statement that it was rare for a match to get to the point of the court 1 winner deciding the team match winner.  Well, if you have read my blog for long, you know something like that causes me to go look to see if the statement in fact is true.

I have researched this a bit before, in fact I looked at how often ties happened at 40 & Over Nationals a few weeks ago, but that was before all of 40 & Over was done, so taking a look again, there were 292 team matches played, 84 of them (29%) were 2-2 ties, 31 of these (11%) were also tied on sets, and finally 3 were tied on games as well and as a result were decided by the team that won court 1 doubles.

Now, three is not a lot, but that is out of 292 matches and three represents just over 1% of all matches.  One percent probably does qualify as "rare", but clearly it does happen so one should not construe the claim of rare to mean it will probably never happen.

And before you say it is so "rare" that it would never happen in a meaningful match, one of the three occurrences was in the semi-final match for the 4.5 men, and another was in a match that decided who advanced to the semis for the 3.5 women.  Matches don't get much more important than these.

But what about across all 40 & Over play?  For 2021, there were 27,751 team matches played for 40 & Over using the 1 singles 3 doubles format, of these 7,204 (26%) ended in 2-2 ties, 2,927 (11%) were tied on sets, and 248 (1%) were tied on games.  The percentages are remarkably close to those at Nationals.

So, with this rule in place, it appears one can expect 1% of matches to be decided by the court 1 winner.

I know many people, myself included, don't like the 4-court format, but given it is still here, do you prefer court 1 doubles deciding ties?  Did you like points per position to just make 2-2 ties inconsequential?  Or prefer another way to handle it?

What the USTA could learn from the ITF - How to break ties in round-robin play!

The ITF Billie Jean King Cup, the event that used to be Fed Cup, is taking place this week in Prague.  It is a competition between countries

In the past, Fed Cup was played over three weekends throughout the year with four pairs of teams facing off one weekend early in the year with one of the countries being the host, the the winners advance to the semis two pairs play with one country being the host, and the winners then play the final near the end of the year with one of the countries being the host.  The format for each tie was two singles matches on day 1, then reverse singles on day 2 followed by a double match to potentially determine the winner if the singles matches split 2-2.

In its new form, there are 12 countries that compete, and the whole competition is played over the course of one week all in one location.  Instead of having an elimination bracket, the 12 teams are split into four groups of three countries each where each country plays two round-robin ties against the other two teams in their group.  Each tie is two singles and one doubles match.  The winners of each group advance to the semis where an elimination draw is then played.

For those that follow USTA League, this format probably sounds familiar, as Nationals uses round-robin play to determine four teams to advance to the semis to play an elimination draw.  One of the issues I've identified in the past is how the USTA determines the standings if there are ties on wins/losses, so naturally I wanted to see how the ITF did this for a group based format to see if similar issues existed.

With round-robin formats, it is possible, and often happens, for teams to tie on win/loss record.  When this happens, the event determines how to break the tie using other finer-grained criteria than wins and losses.  In the case of the USTA, they use:

• Individual match/court record
• Head to head
• Sets lost
• Games lost

What the ITF uses is:

• Head-to-head
• Percent of matches won
• Percent of sets won
• Percent of games won

The criteria look similar, but there are some key differences.

First, the ITF places head-to-head ahead of the other criteria.  One can debate which approach is the best, but there are some that think the USTA should do the same.

Second, individual match/court record and percent of matches won is effectively the same, so the next difference is sets lost vs percent of sets won.  These may sound similar but are in fact different, and the ITF gets this right while using sets lost is one of the flaws in the USTA's tie-breakers.  Using just sets lost ignore actually winning sets, while percent of sets won includes the won and lost sets and is more comprehensive and equitable.

Third, if teams do happen to still be tied, the USTA uses games lost while the ITF again gets it right and uses percent of games won.  Using just games lost is a huge flaw in the USTA's approach as this criteria rewards losing a set 6-0 (six games lost) over losing a set 7-6 (seven games lost) which is clearly inequitable, but the USTA has stuck with their criteria despite feedback and a regulation change proposal to fix it.

Before you say, it isn't a big deal, the tie-breakers never go this far or the scenario is unlikely, this flawed tie-breaker has reared its ugly head numerous times including a few weeks ago at 2021 Nationals.  Even if it had never happened, it is silly to have a bad rule and pass it off as unlikely, but it has happened, so USTA, pay attention to the ITF and get this one right!

The remainder of 2021 USTA League Nationals are Mixed

We are into November, and as is often the case, that means the only remaining USTA League Nationals are for Mixed doubles leagues.

This weekend finishes up the 18 & Over Mixed with the 7.0 and 9.0 levels playing in Surprise, AZ.

Next weekend 40 & Over starts and finishes with the 7.0 and 8.0 levels in Surprise, and the 6.0 and 9.0 levels in Orlando.

Good luck everyone!