Thursday, May 26, 2022

Update on 2022 USTA League Nationals, Oklahoma City is back in! And more on WTN

I learned yesterday that one of the sites for 2022 USTA League Nationals has changed.  While the Nationals page/schedule on usta.com has not been updated as of when I'm writing this, it is forthcoming and you can expect to see the events originally scheduled for Tucson to now be in Oklahoma City.  I've updated my prior post so it is (hopefully) now correct.

I also got another e-mail from the USTA on WTN.  It was another "almost here" e-mail with links to I believe the same FAQ and other resources.  I'm expecting WTNs to actually be published for USTA members sometime in June.

Last, I did attend a webinar on WTN a few weeks ago, and as expected the focus was nearly entirely on Juniors.  While it will be published for League players as I understand it, NTRP will continue to be used as it is today for all League play and eligibility, at least to start.

Saturday, May 21, 2022

2022 USTA League Nationals Schedule

Update: The original post on 5/21 listed Tucson as a site for several events, but I have learned that due to a change in the court resurfacing schedule there, it is no longer going to be used and Oklahoma City is in instead.  Look for Tucson to be used in the future though.

I've updated everything below to reflect this on the understanding it is a straight swap.  Note, as I update this the Nationals page does still list Tucson but I'm told the change is imminent.


It took a little longer than usual, but the USTA League Nationals schedule is now available for the 2022 events.

The facilities/sites used for 2022 are similar to 2021, but a bit different.  Oklahoma City is out, and Tucson is in.  Oklahoma City is back in as noted above.

  • Scottsdale, AZ - Scottsdale Ranch Park
  • Surprise, AZ - Surprise Tennis and Racquet Complex
  • Tucson, AZ - El Conquistador Resort
  • Oklahoma City, OK - OKC Tennis Center
  • Orlando, FL - USTA National Campus
The tournament handbooks are not out yet, and confusingly the USTA still has the 2021 handbooks on the Nationals page, so do not read those handbooks and think they are for 2022.

The schedule remains roughly October thru mid-November and events are three days from Friday thru Sunday.  The schedule does have more 40 & Over and 55 & Over events earlier in October than recent years and and 18 & Over event later in October which hasn't happened recently.  A few events are at the same location as last year, these have an * below.

Here is the full schedule.

September 30 - October 2

  • TucsonOKC - 18 & Over 2.5W
  • Surprise - 18 & Over 3.5*

October 7-9
  • Surprise - 18 & Over 4.5*
  • Scottsdale - 40 & Over 3.5
  • TucsonOKC - 40 & Over 4.0

October 14-16
  • Surprise - 18 & Over 4.0*
  • Scottsdale - 18 & Over 3.0
  • TucsonOKC - 40 & Over 4.5
  • Orlando - 55 & Over 7.0 (clay)*

October 21-23
  • Scottsdale - 18 & Over 5.0
  • Surprise - 40 & Over 3.0*
  • Orlando - 55 & Over 8.0 (clay)*

October 28-30
  • Orlando - 55 & Over 6.0/9.0 (clay)*
  • Surprise - 18 & Over Mixed 6.0/8.0/10.0*

November 4-6
  • Surprise - 18 & Over Mixed 7.0/9.0*

November 11-13
  • Surprise - 40 & Over Mixed 7.0/8.0*
  • Orlando - 40 & Over Mixed 6.0/9.0*

The Phoenix area is again the focal point for Nationals with at least one event being held there every weekend and 10 of the 17 are there.  And Arizona hosts 13 of the 17.

Thankfully the USTA is not experimenting with other sites that may have weather issues as they did a few years ago and is sticking with the reliable good weather that Arizona provides.  Nothing is guaranteed, but the percentages are better in Arizona than Texas, Alabama, or South Florida.

Let's hope USTA League remains on schedule and gets played and the above schedule can happen.  Good luck to all those teams with aspirations of making it to Nationals!

Friday, May 13, 2022

What is the WTN Game zONe and how does it and WTN map to NTRP?

I wasn't going to write again on this subject so soon, but the USTA sent out yet another e-mail this morning hyping WTN, so I figured no time like the present to keep the posts going.

The latest e-mail doesn't offer a lot of new information, it just reinforces that NTRP is not going away for League play as a static (for the year) rating/level is more useful for season long competition, but it does offer a downloadable PDF guide/FAQ that summarizes much of the other information out there and that I've written on before.

But on to the new content I have for today!

The USTA will soon be publishing the ITF's World Tennis Number (WTN) for players on their usta.com profile.  While the USTA is saying NTRP is staying put for USTA League, it is still interesting to look at WTN and how we might correlate it to NTRP.

NTRP is purported to offer "compatible" matches between players of the same level.  For example, two 3.5s (3.01-3.50) are considered compatible and should have a reasonably fun and perhaps competitive match with each other.

WTN has what is called the Game zONe which is the range of WTNs a player should be competitive with, in fact they state your winning percentage should be 35-65%, which would seem to be more than compatible and legitimately competitive.

So what is this Game zONe range?  Several examples appear on the WTN info pages I've seen, here is a sampling:

  • WTN of 25.4 with a Game zONe of 23.6 to 27.2 (range of 3.6 from -1.8 to +1.8)
  • WTN of 24.5 with a Game zONe of 22.7 to 26.8 (range of 4.1 from -1.8 to +2.3)
  • WTN of 18.0 with a Game zONe of 16.1 to 19.8 (range of 3.7 from -1.9 to +1.8)

Now, perhaps none of these examples are real, and the inconsistency in the size of the range and offset  from the WTN isn't indicative of what we'll really see.  But if it is close to reality, we can perhaps figure out a mapping from NTRP to WTN and vice versa.

If the WTN "competitive" window is ~4 (+/- 2), the "compatible" window would be a bit larger, say 6 (+/- 3), and NTRP levels being on the 0.5 mean the "compatible" range for NTRP is 0.5.  Which would lead us to believe that a WTN range that is the equivalent of a NTRP level is 3.  If that is true, then there are ~13 levels (3x13 = 39) covering 40 to 1.

Note, it is possible that the Game zONe is actually somewhat variable depending on the WTN, for example, perhaps the zone gets smaller at lower WTNs, i.e. the pro level.

But another way to look at it might be that NTRP ranges from 1.5 to 7.0 and that covers 12 levels.  So if there are 12 NTRP levels and 40 rounded WTN ratings, one NTRP level should span 3.33 WTN levels which is close to the first approach above.

Taking either of these approaches as guidance, we'd have the following potential mapping of NTRP to WTN:

Hypothetical NTRP to WTN Mapping
NTRPWTN
1.540-38
2.037-35
2.534-32
3.031-28
3.527-24
4.023-20
4.519-16
5.015-13
5.512-10
6.09-7
6.56-4
7.03-1

Note of course that NTRP isn't really used across all those levels as it isn't really calculated for players outside of the 2.5-5.5 range, so whether or not Novak would be right at 7.00 or not is unknown.  And I'm only guessing at how many slots will be reserved for beginners who don't really play competitively to actually have a rating calculated.

I've also taken the liberty of having NTRP levels from 3.0-4.5 cover 4 WTN levels each since that is where the bulk of the players are, and the fringes on the end of the NTRP scale cover 3 WTN levels each which is really just a guess on my part.  Perhaps more differentiation is needed at the pro level and those ranges are larger.

I've also done a discreet mapping from NTRP to WTN above, but the reality is that because the algorithms are different, there may be some overlap when WTNs are published.  For example there may be 3.5s that have WTNs that don't all fit nicely in the 24-27 bucket and there are some WTN 23s or 28s as well that happen to be NTRP 3.5.

So it may be that this math isn't exactly right.  But I do think it gives us a ballpark idea how things may map.  When WTNs are actually published, I will do analysis and see how things map in the real world.

The big thing players will need to get used to is that WTN is "upside down", and as you get better your rating gets lower.  I've noted this early in what I've wrote, but it probably deserves mention again.

What do you think?  If you are primarily a League player, will you follow your WTN or consider it just noise?

Thursday, May 12, 2022

The USTA sends out more e-mails introducing the ITF World Tennis Number

I haven't written about the World Tennis Number (WTN) in just two days, but over that period I've received three more e-mails from the USTA introducing or announcing it.  They clearly want to get the word out, and I guess their tactic is working as they are getting me to write about it again! 😮

The first new e-mail (yesterday) highlighted that your WTN will show up on your usta.com profile.  Note, this is different than TennisLink and what you see when you login to your account there.  My guess is TennisLink remains as it is today and WTNs only show up on usta.com.

As a reminder (see this post for more details), a WTN is in the range from 40 to 1, with 40 being a very beginner and 1 being top pros.  It appears what will be shown on a player's profile is a WTN to one decimal point, e.g. 28.2, but they are also going to show a "Game zONe" range that gives an indication of what WTNs you will be competitive against.  An example they give shows that 28.2 player having a Game zONe from 25.2 to 31.2, and the USTA posits that if you play against someone within this range, you would be expected to win 35-65% of the time.

This e-mail also directly addresses the state of NTRP and explicitly says "[NTRP] is NOT planned to go away as it is a key tool designed specifically for your USTA League experience".  This makes it sound like leagues will continue to use NTRP for awhile at least.

Tournaments may be a different story, particularly for juniors, but even for Adults you might see WTN used for selection or seeding incrementally over time.

The first of today's e-mails (Thursday) highlights how WTN is more than just a single number but will provide access to various statistics and head to head metrics at worldtennisnumber.com.  That site says there are just over 1.2M players with WTNs.

The second of today's e-mails is pitching the webinars that are going to be held the next few weeks, which is the same as the e-mail from Tuesday.  The description for the webinar starts "As an integral part of our USTA Junior Pathway", which reinforces that it is really just about juniors to start.

Other information in or linked in the e-mails just regurgitates earlier information I already wrote about.

Since the USTA is pushing it so much, it is probably worthwhile to speculate about what this might mean to a League player.

First, I expect that leagues will continue to use NTRP for the foreseeable future.  There is a chance that some alternate leagues could experiment with using WTN in some way, but there will be a number of challenges with that:

  • WTN is far more granular than NTRP and you can't really have flights on a single WTN but would need ranges.
  • WTN will be calculating different ratings for singles and doubles so a player could be a 23.4 in singles but a 25.6 in doubles, so what flight/range is the player eligible for?
  • WTNs will be updated weekly, so what happens when a player becomes out of level?

There are probably other subtle issues beyond these, and they can probably be overcome, but a switch to WTN will take a lot of time and trials and experiments.

Second, while League won't specificly use WTN, player's WTNs will be published and available and could be used in a few ways.

For juniors or collegiate players, there will be an opportunity to use their WTN and map it to NTRP in lieu of self-rating as it is done today.  This should be a significant improvement as the self-rate questionnaire, as well intentioned as it may be, isn't perfect and it can place players at the wrong level.  Using an objectively calculated rating should be much better.

Published WTNs will also be available to captains to use to recruit players, scout opponents, and otherwise plan line-ups.  It is also possible that the USTA could mandate that line-ups must be done with higher WTNs on court 1 or 2.

Third, many players do crave more information about where they stand and if they are improving.  NTRP only being published yearly and only to the 0.5 level clearly doesn't address this, and as a result players use third party sites or get reports from me to fill this hole.  With WTN, they will see what this new rating says which will at least give players a measure of if they are improving or not.

However, it is a different algorithm than NTRP and it is entirely possible a player's WTN improves but their NTRP goes the other way, and obviously WTN will not give an indication of if a player is going to be bumped or not, so perhaps there will still be demand for my reports.

I will now anxiously await the next USTA WTN e-mail to see what additional info they share.  Will I get on Friday?  If not, I may have to wait for a webinar next week and will write more then.


Wednesday, May 11, 2022

Does the USTA have Mixed ratings and leagues all wrong?

The USTA has a variety of leagues for different ages and genders including Mixed leagues where Mixed doubles are played with each doubles pair being a man and a woman.  Mixed is very popular in some areas and with some players due to the playing opportunities it offers.

In its advancing league format (can progress on to Nationals), the format is to use combined NTRP levels on the ".0", e.g. there are flights for combined levels 6.0, 7.0, 8.0, 9.0, and 10.0.  This means that players at the "mid" levels can play in three different flights at the same time.

For example, a 3.5 player, man or woman, can play 6.0 (with a 2.5 partner), 7.0 (with a 3.5 partner), and 8.0 (with a 4.5 partner) in the same league.  Similarly, a 4.0 can play 7.0, 8.0, and 9.0 at the same time.

Now, this can create can only be called interesting tennis with what are quite unbalanced pairings and players on a court.  Consider an 8.0 match with a 3.5 woman and 4.5 man on one side, and two 4.0s on the other.  Conventional wisdom is that since NTRP levels are not gender neutral and there is in fact roughly a 0.5 gap between a male and female player of the same ability, we could normalize this by adding 0.5 to the men's levels and say this Mixed match is really a 3.5/5.0  pair vs a 4.0/4.5 pair.  This means we have what is supposed to be a competitive recreational match with players from four different levels on the court and one pair three levels apart.

There is nothing inherently wrong with this, but it does make for a different game of doubles than is customarily played in same gender leagues.  Due to the disparity between the 3.5 and "5.0", a competitive opponent is going to mercilessly target the 3.5 as they are clearly the weaker player.  As a result, the 3.5/"5.0" pair may do things like position the 3.5 right on top of the net guarding the alley to dissuade the opponent from targeting her and allow the "5.0" to get all the balls.

Now, part of the reason some people like Mixed is not just because one player can play in three different flights, but because of the range of levels that can be on a team, it allows friends and spouses at different levels to be on a team together that they wouldn't normally be able to.  This tends to make Mixed more of a social league in general, but some take it seriously and deploy the tactics described above to maximize the chances of winning.

I've often thought that Mixed flights should be on the ".5", e.g. 5.5, 6.5, 7.5, 8.5, 9.5, with the max allowed difference being 0.5, thus a 7.5 flight would have 3.5s and 4.0s, which would result in less disparity in ability being on a single court, but still allow a fairly diverse set of players to be on a team.

Some areas actually do have "Combo Mixed" leagues on the ".5", but these are only local leagues and don't advance to Nationals.

What do you think?  Should Mixed be on the ".5"?  If you play in a Combo Mixed league on the ".5", how has it worked out?

The other observation about Mixed is regarding ratings.  The USTA publishes a single rating/level for each player.  If a player plays at least three applicable Adult (same gender) matches, their rating is based solely on those results and no Mixed matches that are played count.  It is only if a player plays just Mixed (three or more Mixed and two or fewer same gender Adult) matches that their Mixed matches are used for their rating, and then only the Mixed results are used and they get an "M" rating/level at year-end rather than a "C".

Part of the reason Mixed matches are kept separate is that, due to the format with the broad spread of abilities, it really is a different game, and/or the USTA does consider it to be more social league and the results to not fairly represent a player's ability.  This is supported by the fact that a player that gets an "M" rating is required to self-rate again to play Adult, so the USTA doesn't really trust Mixed results to reflect a player's ability.

Or they don't want players to tank their Mixed matches in order to manage their rating to prevent being bumped up from their Adult matches.

For many players, this isn't a big issue.  Most players play a fair amount of Adult matches, and more importantly, their results in Adult and Mixed indicate a similar ability, so even if the USTA used Mixed matches along with Adult matches, players likely wouldn't have their year-end level change.

However, there are some that really get into Mixed and play all the levels they can and get on teams with aspirations of going to and winning Nationals.  If these players only play Mixed, they'd get an "M" rating based on these matches and all would presumably be fine.  Unfortunately, some will play Adult also, but only the bare minimum, and they get a "C" rating based on just a few matches.  For those players that really focus on Mixed and that style of game, or worse, those that will not "play their best" in their Adult matches, this "C" rating may not really represent their ability in Mixed.

What this allows is for a player to clean-up in Mixed, perhaps unfairly, while their opponents who play both Adult and Mixed and go all out in their Adult matches, are at a disadvantage comparatively.

It this an issue?  Someone thought so as there is a petition on change.org, "Close the NTRP Rating System Loophole in USTA Leagues", that asks for the USTA to not ignore Mixed match results in calculating year-end ratings.

The petition simply asks for Mixed matches to be included.  I'm sure that could be done, have a single year-end rating that factors in Adult and Mixed, but would that really accomplish what they are after?  Someone could still play Adult to manage their rating down which would offset their excellent Mixed results.  And there might be unintended consequences where someone is bad at Mixed and including those pulls their rating down and they get an artificially low rating for Adult.

Other alternatives would be to:

  • Keep calculating Adult and Mixed separately, but have a player's year-end level be the higher of what is calculated for each.
  • Keep calculating Adult and Mixed separately, and give a player two levels, one they use to play Adult and one they use to play Mixed.

Both of these options address using one discipline to sandbag to get an artificially low rating for the other, one just forces the player to play at the higher of the levels for all matches.

What do you think?  Is this even a problem that needs to be addressed?  If so, in way?

Tuesday, May 10, 2022

The USTA continues to hype the ITF World Tennis Number

The ITF's World Tennis Number (WTN) has been in the making for many years and I've written about it numerous times, most recently last month when the USTA posted a video about it.

Well, today another e-mail came out from the USTA which was little ore than a "Coming Soon" notice to look for more information and upcoming webinars and other information to educate folks about it.

I don't think much of anything changed in the FAQ they have, so my earlier summary and comments all still apply, so give that a read if you are interested.