What has the 40 & over division done to scheduled and matches per team? Interesting Tennis League Stats

Through 2012, USTA League had an 18 & over division and then a "Senior" division that was for those 50 & over.  In 2013, this changed to add a 40 & over division and change the existing Senior division to 55 & over.

I occasionally hear discussion about participation in the 40 & over league, if it is really needed/different from the 18 & over, and if it was just a way for the USTA to charge members to play in another league and make more money.  So looking at some stats is in order.

I've written about league participation before, but the quick summary is that in 2016 there were about 200K participants in 18 & over and 125K in 40 & over.  That likely means a lot of 40+ folks play in 18+, but 18+ is certainly still serving a large group of folks.

18 & over participation:

40 & over participation:

One can't dispute the claim that the USTA is making more money by giving those over 40 two divisions to play in.  But those players do get to play more right?

Some believe or have observed that when the split happened, the seasons for the leagues became a bit shorter, necessary in order to fit two separate seasons into the calendar.  So, I went about looking at the number of team matches played in 2012 and then successive years after the split.

In the chart above, we see that teams on average played just over 9 regular season matches per season, and since then both the 18+ and 40+ leagues have dropped to just under 9 for the 18+ and closer to 8 for 40+.

Based on this, the data does support the observation that on average, teams do have a few fewer matches.  For 18+, about one of every three teams played one match less than before the split, and 40+ has just played fewer from the start.

So it is correct that adding the 40+ league has not doubled the playing opportunity for those over 40, but it is pretty close as the matches per team has dropped only slightly.

What NTRP rating combinations works best in 55 & over Adult? More Interesting Tennis League Stats

In USTA League play, the 55 & over division typically uses combined ratings rather than straight NTRP levels.  For example, in 18+ and 40+, you have 3.0, 3.5, 4.0, 4.5, etc. flights where the players must be at level or can be one level lower and play up.  But in most sections, the 55 & over division are combination leagues, e.g. 7.0, 8.0, 9.0 where the ratings of the players on court cannot exceed the level for the league.  This can work because the 55 & over division is only doubles and there is no singles.

A question then is, is it better two players at the same level or a higher and lower level player making a doubles team?  I've done this sort of analysis for Mixed doubles play in the past (it is also combination of levels) and it showed that the unbalanced pairs typically win more when playing balanced pairs.  While there are more permutations with Mixed, the unbalanced pairs when the male is higher rated do tend to win more often, 57-61% of the time.

I went ahead and did the same analysis for 55+ looking at results over the past three years.  Here is what it shows by level.

First the men:

• 7.0M - 4.0/3.0 pairs beat the 3.5/3.5 pairs 58% of the time.
• 8.0M - 4.5/3.5 pairs beat 4.0/4.0 pairs 56% of the time.
• 9.0M - 5.0/4.0 pairs beat the 4.5/4.5 pairs 60% of the time.

And the women:

• 7.0W - 4.0/3.0 pairs beat the 3.5/3.5 pairs 55% of the time.
• 8.0W - 4.5/3.5 pairs beat 4.0/4.0 pairs 55% of the time.
• 9.0W - 5.0/4.0 pairs beat the 4.5/4.5 pairs 69% of the time.

So the trend observed in Mixed seems to hold in 55+ too, both men and women.

Now, this obviously depends on how strong the players are for their level.  It is possible that the 3.0's that play 7.0 (and the 3.5s that play 8.0 and 4.0s that play 9.0) are strong for their level and they are playing the full range of ratings for players on the balanced teams, so that could be at least a partial explanation.

Another explanation may be that the unbalanced pairs have the strongest player on the court, and if they can assert themselves, that advantage is the reason the unbalanced pairs win more often.

What do you think?

2013 - 2015 USTA League participation by year, division/league, and gender, USTA League players are aging - Interesting tennis league stats

I took a look at how participation in USTA League has changed the past three years, specifically looking at the number of unique players playing in all of the advancing 18 & over, 40 & over, 55 & over, and 65 & over divisions/leagues.  The natural next step was to look at the numbers for each division, so here goes.

First, here is the 18 & over division.

The trend here is similar to the overall trend, the drop here being just over 3% since 2013.

Here is the 40 & over division.

Interestingly, while the totals for this division are lower than the 18 & over as you might expect, the unique players in this league has grown each year!  Participation is up nearly 7% since 2013.

An explanation for this might be that as some of the 38 and 39 year olds have turned 40, they've elected to only play 40 & over and there have not been enough new under 40 year-olds joining to fill the void.  And those that turn 55 seem to continue to play 40 & over.  Also, the 40 & over division was new for 2013 so perhaps it took some a year or two to get on board with it.

Let us see if the trend continues in 55 & over.

Sure enough, the trend continues.  This group is up over 4% since 2013.  As the 53 and 54 year olds have turned 55, they keep playing at a higher rate than they get too old or injured and stop it would appear.

Given all this, it would be interesting to see what the average age of these players is.  Alas, I don't have that data, but I would hypothesize that the average age is increasing which would indicate that existing players keep playing as long as they can, but the new younger players are not joining and playing USTA League enough to replace the older players that do end up not playing at some point.

What do you think?

2013 - 2015 USTA League participation by year and gender - Interesting tennis league stats

I see comments periodically saying that participation in USTA League has been declining the past few years.  Naturally, that gave me reason to take a look.

Using the data I have from calculating Estimated Dynamic NTRP Rating Reports, I took a look at how many players have played in the 18 & over, 40 & over, 55 & over, and 65 & over Adult divisions regular season.  These number do not include players that only played Mixed, or only played in Tri-Level, Combo, Singles, or other non-advancing leagues/divisions.

First, kudos to the USTA for organizing leagues that get nearly 300K players participating.  I'm sure this is a small fraction of all the tennis players playing in the United States, but is still a good sized number.

But to answer the question about participation, there does appear to be a small but consistent decline the past few years.  It may be hard to see in the chart, but total participation was down about 4,000 from 2013 to 2014, and was down another 2,000 this year.  So just over 2% from 2013 to 2015.

And the decline is pretty consistent across genders, although men's participation almost stayed flat from 2014 to 2015.

With all data and analysis, we need to understand what we are looking at and this is looking just at participation in the advancing leagues as noted above.  It could very well be that while these have declined, the other non-advancing leagues haven't and could even have grown.

As to why there might be a decline, I can only speculate.  There could just be fewer people playing tennis, or perhaps league fees have gone up and driven a few away, or some have decided they don't want/need to play in the advancing leagues and taken their play to other leagues/divisions.

What do you think?

Do I have to play up to be bumped up in USTA League - Interesting Tennis League Stats

In USTA League play, a player may play at their established NTRP level or subject to some limitations, they may play up a level.  This is done for a variety of reasons including:

• The higher level team is short on players and needs spots filled
• The player wants to play with their friends that are on the higher level team
• The player is bored at their level
• The player thinks playing up will help them be bumped up

The last reason listed is a commonly held belief and it does have some truth to it.  When you play up, you are likely playing higher rated opponents and when you do that there is more opportunity to improve your rating.  However, it is not a given that playing up will improve your rating and result in a bump, in fact, if a player is not ready for the next level and just gets continually blown out, their rating could go down.  For example, winning an at-level match 6-3,6-3 may be better than losing a played up match 6-3,6-3.  If the player isn't ready for the next level, this can also make for uncompetitive matches which isn't good for any of the players involved.  Sometimes playing at the right level and improving from competitive matches is a better way to improve your rating.

All that said, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at bump data to see what we can tell about bumps and playing up and any correlation between them.

What I did was to look at the computer rated players that were bumped up at 2014 year-end and how many played up in a 18 & over or 40 & over league.  Here are two charts showing for each gender the number of players bumped up that played up and didn't.

First the men:

We can see that the majority of bumps up are at 3.5, 4.0, and 4.5 and a fair number to 5.0 too.  But the percentage that play up decreases as the level goes up.  Of the bumps to 3.0, 91% played up but at 4.5, the percentage is just 38%.

Now the women:

While the raw numbers and distribution for the women is different, there are a lot more players bumped up to 3.0, the decreasing percentage that played up is evident here too with 80% playing up to get bumped up to 3.0 and 52% at 4.5.

So does this mean you have to play up to get bumped up?  Certainly not, large numbers of players are bumped up that don't play up.  But especially at the lower levels it appears more of those that are bumped up do play up than don't.

And one could make the argument that these players that play up would have been bumped up anyway.  To check this, I used my Estimated Dynamic NTRP Ratings to look at a few players that played up and compared their average match rating in at level vs played up matches.

One man that was bumped up to 4.5 that did better in his 4.0 matches, a 4.20 average, than his 4.5 matches, a 3.87 average.

A woman that was bumped up to 3.5 did better in her 3.5 matches, a 3.38 average vs a 3.03 average playing 3.0.  But another one bumped up to 3.5 did better in her 3.0 matches, a 2.94, to a 2.86 3.5 average.  Note she was bumped up due to a good run in playoffs at the end of the year.

Now, this is just looking at a few players, but it appears that playing up can help you get bumped up, but in some cases, players get bumped up in spite of playing up as they actually do better playing at level.

So, if you feel the urge to play up, stop and think about it first and try to make sure that you really are winning most of your matches at your own level, perhaps even doing so easily.  If you aren't, playing up may actually hurt your chances to be bumped up.

USTA League playoffs are in full swing and each section is a little unique

It is that time of year when regular season play in Spring USTA leagues is complete and playoffs have begun.  This past weekend saw playoffs occurring in some Southern states as well as the Pacific Northwest and I was fortunate to help a number of teams with reports across both and was excited to see some advance on to Sectionals.  It wasn't from this weekend, but I have actually worked with a team that is already headed to Nationals!

Because of regional and geographic differences, it is always interesting to see how playoffs progress.

For example, in the Southern section, each district is a complete state and teams may advance directly to "State" or some may play a local playoff against another team or teams from their local area to qualify.  But oftentimes there are wildcards that qualify to advance too so it isn't uncommon to see multiple teams from an area at State.  The winners from State then advance on to Sectionals, and again I think there are cases where a wildcard, say the second place team from a state, may advance on to Sectionals.

In the Pacific Northwest, we have what are called our local playoffs, but they are effectively our Districts as the winners advance on to Sectionals.  But this is typically more than just a playoff against one other team, most levels have a draw of 6 or 8 teams that must be won to advance on to Sectionals, but again, sometimes there is a wildcard that also advances.

Northern California has Districts and Sectionals, but they don't actually have different districts organizationally, they just take a subset of the areas to play Districts with winners advancing on to Sectionals.

There are a few areas in Eastern where the road is even longer though with potentially local playoffs, Regionals, Districts, and Sectionals having to be navigated to get to Nationals.

The easiest path to Nationals?  Typically that is to come from the Hawaii section.  There, you may just have to win a handful of matches in local league to get your spot at Nationals.

If you've qualified for playoffs, congratulations.  If your local league is still playing, you still have a shot to get there!

Another Senior that was able to appeal down and is now a ringer - Get this one on your team!

I wrote a few days ago about the rules that allow for players 60 & over to automatically appeal down if they get bumped up, but had been at the lower level for three consecutive years.  This can lead to situations like I cited where a player that is clearly above level, gets to play at a lower level.  They are in essence the perfect ringer.

Well, I found another one that was able to appeal down even farther.  The prior one I wrote about was able to appeal from a 4.4 Estimated Dynamic NTRP Rating down to be a 4.0, a 0.4 drop.  The one I found this evening was able to to appeal down a whopping 0.51, from 4.51 to be a 4.0.

Here is the chart so you can see the full effect.

This player had a great year going 33-5 and 8-1 in the playoffs, the one loss being a match tie-break.  They can clearly play at the 4.5 level and even arguably at 5.0, but due to the Senior appeal rule, get to be a 4.0 for 2015.

Now, to be fair, this player is only 7-4 in 2015, so perhaps age really does catch up with you and this rule is appropriate most of the time.  Getting to appeal down 0.51 is still a huge amount though.

Is this USTA League player tanking to manage their dynamic NTRP rating? Or just bad at singles?

I came across a player that on the surface one could accuse of tanking matches to manage their rating, but upon deeper inspection, I'm not sure it is so clear.

The player went 5-3 in the Spring league playing 4.0 but went 0-6 in Fall leagues, one a 3.5 match late in the 2013 calendar year and five more in 2014.  So they are using the Fall league to manage their rating down right?

I'm not so sure.  Here is their chart for last year.

There is clearly a very wide range in the results, and the Fall league matches do stand out as the worse results, but because my Estimated Dynamic NTRP Rating reports break out singles and doubles results both in the summary stats and the chart, it is clear that all the Fall league matches that are the bad results are singles while the Spring league results are all doubles.  There are also some lower rated doubles matches during the Spring so the Fall league results don't stand out too much.

But looking at singles vs doubles, this player's average match ratings are 3.24 vs 3.57, a full 0.33 different.  That is an awfully big spread, in most of the reports I do for players their difference is just a tenth or two, but not over three tenths.

So is this player tanking matches?  Or are they just bad a singles?  The data would seem to lean towards supporting the latter, although it is possible they just prefer to tank using singles matches so it doesn't look as suspicious.  It is also possible the 3/20 doubles result was a fluke in some way due to an opponent having a bad day or just the way the algorithm works in some circumstances and so their results don't really vary that much.

What do you think?

How accurate are Dynamic NTRP ratings at predicting tennis matches? Interesting League Stats

I've been doing sub-flight previews that show how teams stack up by comparing the average Estimated Dynamic NTRP Rating of the players on their roster.  While using average rating doesn't necessarily tell you who will win a sub-flight, for those that I've looked at after matches have been played, for the most part the higher average rating teams are at or near the top.

From this we could reasonably support the notion that higher rated players will generally win more often over lower rated players.  This shouldn't be a big surprise, but it gets more interesting if we dig deeper.

One way to look at how accurate dynamic ratings are is to see how well they predict individual matches.  I did this a little bit looking at some Nationals matches last year, but I've looked at more matches and here is how they do.

Here is what percent of the time the higher rated player/doubles team won a match grouped by the gap between teams looking at matches during the 2014 USTA year.

Gap	Winning %
0.00 - 0.05	53%
0.05 - 0.15	63%
0.15 - 0.25	75%
0.25 - 0.35	84%
0.35 - 0.45	90%
0.45 - 0.55	93%
0.55 - 0.65	95%
0.65 - 0.75	96%

No big surprise here.  If players are rated about the same, the match is just about a toss-up.  The bigger the gap, the more likely it is that the higher rated player(s) win.

What may be surprising is how quickly the winning percentage goes up.  With a gap of just 0.2 the higher rated player(s) win 75% of the time.  And by the time the gap gets to 0.4 the winning percentage is 90%.

The above stats are from 2014, but I'll be looking at 2015 soon.  And one can imagine that it is important to get the right match-ups in matches as well and I'll be writing about that.

Stay tuned!

USTA League Players by State - Interesting tennis league stats

If you've ever wondered which state has the largest number of USTA League players, this is the blog post for you.

Without any more lead-in, here is the chart.

The states are alphabetical starting at 12 o'clock and going clockwise, and we see California leads the way with Georgia in second place narrowly beating out Texas.  The top-10 is rounded out with North Carolina, Colorado, Florida, South Carolina, New York, Virginia, and Ohio.

My state, Washington, is #11 followed by Pennsylvania, Alabama, Louisiana, and Michigan.

I based these counts on the number of players that had a year-end rating for 2014.

Any surprises?

2015 has already begun, last chance to get extended 2014 reports,

Most of you know that 2014 year-end ratings came out at the beginning of this month, and if you've been reading this blog, you know that these ratings actually included matches played through just 11/9/14.  So what happens to the matches after 11/9?

They actually are part of the 2015 league year.  That year generally runs from November thru October, the specific end date depends on when Adult Nationals finish, and year-end ratings generally come out the Monday after Thanksgiving (to confuse things though, the USTA gives a year-end rating date of 12/31).  So there is no other place for the matches after 11/9 to go than into the 2015 calculations.

So if you've played matches after 11/9, you've actually started 2015 already!

So if you get an Estimated Dynamic NTRP Rating Report now, what do you get?  For the next couple days, you actually have a choice.  If you'd like your 2015 report showing just the matches since 11/9, I can do that.  But if you'd like an "extended" 2014 report, I can still do it thru 12/31.  This will show you your normal 2014 report, but just tack on the matches after 11/9 as if it was all part of the same year.

Not only does the extended report save you money by giving you two reports in one in a way, this sort of gives you a "what if" so you can see what your year-end rating might have been if those last few matches had been included in 2014.  And I've seen a few cases where someone's rating did go above/below a bump threshold after 11/9.

As always, if interested, contact me!

Christmas reports now include a single page PDF, perfect for stocking stuffers for that tennis nut in your family

Estimated Dynamic NTRP Rating reports are a great Christmas gift for any of your USTA League playing family and friends, and I've improved the offering by now including a nicely formatted PDF with the summary, partner report, and match/dynamic ratings chart all fitting on a single page that can be conveniently printed and used as a stocking stuffer.  It doesn't include my explanations or other text, but I'll still include that in the e-mail that is sent.

Here is an example.

I'll be including the PDF for no extra charge the rest of the year upon request, so contact me and let me know if you want a report and if you want the "stocking stuffer" option!

2014 USTA League year-end bump percentages for NTRP 4.5 broken out by section and gender - Interesting tennis league stats

Continuing on the quest to see how players were bumped up/down at different levels, here are charts showing how players at the 4.5 level were bumped up or down by section and gender in the 2014 year-end NTRP ratings.



Unlike what we saw for he 3.0, 3.5, and 4.0 levels, there is not the bias towards more bumps up than down with many sections have more players bumped down than up, particularly for the women.  There are a few exceptions though.

For the men, most sections had more bumps down than up or close to it.  Narrowly having more bump downs were Eastern, SoCal, and Texas, and Caribbean had a fair number more, but once again, the Pacific Northwest was hammered with nearly 25% of the 4.5s bumped up to 5.0 and less than 5% bumped down.

For the women, there were even fewer bumps up, just the Pacific Northwest and SoCal having more players going up than down.  Interestingly, Caribbean women received no bumps up, just bumps down.

Need a last minute Christmas gift for a USTA League tennis nut? An Estimated Dynamic NTRP Rating Report could be it!

Christmas is less than a week away and you still haven't gotten a gift for a teammate or that tennis nut family member.  The malls are crowded and picked over and buying online may not make it in time unless you pay extra for faster shipping.  What to do?

An Estimated Dynamic NTRP Rating Report could be the perfect gift.  Reports are generated and sent the same day (or first thing the following day if ordered very late) so it will get there in time, and it is a great way to let your tennis fanatic know how their matches really rated during the year and how close they really were to (not) being bumped up or down.

Contact me for more information or to request a report.

2014 USTA League year-end bump percentages for NTRP 3.0 broken out by section and gender - Interesting tennis league stats

Continuing on the quest to see how players were bumped up/down at different levels, here are charts showing how players at the 3.0 level were bumped up or down in the 2014 year-end NTRP ratings.



Given the bias towards bump ups we saw from the 3.5 level, it isn't a surprise to see more bumps up than down, but the 3.0s take it to another level.  This is probably to be expected as 3.0 is a level many new players start at and as they improve, they'll be bumped up.  So there are certainly a lot of new 3.5s to replace those that got bumped up to 4.0.

And while a few sections stand out being bumped up more than others, notably Caribbean and Southern California, there are fewer anomalies at this level.

The depths some players will go to to try to not get bumped up - The dark side of USTA League

I recently became aware of another seemingly blatant attempt by a few players to deliberately manipulate their ratings down to avoid being bumped up.  While not on the scale of the 2014 3.0 men's Nationals team I wrote about before as it wasn't an entire roster, it is arguably more egregious because it was by established players and the excuse of being new or not knowing simply doesn't fly.

This situation happened in my back yard in the Pacific Northwest and involved our One Doubles league.  This is a summer league we have that involves a team of at most 4 players playing a single doubles match for each team match.  You can think of it as our version of Tri-Level, we just split a Tri-Level team into individual teams.

This league is played in the summer, usually right after our local playoffs.  So teams have finished their "normal" seasons and are playing for fun or to get to play outside (most of our normal leagues are indoors) and while there are playoffs and you can advance to the Tri-Level Invitational, it isn't as widely played and generally not as serious as the 18+ and 40+ leagues.

The team in question had players from a local 4.0 playoff winner that was advancing on to Sectionals and ultimately Nationals, so had done very well.  It turns out that only 3 of the rostered players ended up playing in the One Doubles league, and they were all very high rated 4.0s.  One was an early start bump to 4.5 and my ratings had the other two very close.

If they were to do well in playoffs, they would likely be bumped up to 4.5 and in apparent fear of this, they went about using the One Doubles league to throw matches to manipulate their ratings down.  That is appalling enough, but the degree to which they did it takes things to the next level.  Remember now, this is normal doubles played against other 4.0s and these guys are higher rated 4.0s.

One player played 6 matches, losing every one, the closest score being a 6-1,6-3 loss and a full 8 of the 12 sets being 6-1 or 6-0 losses.  Another played 4 matches also losing every one, the closest score being 6-2,6-1.  The third played 2 matches winning a total of 6 games.  And even worse yet, some of the opponents were 3.5s playing up.

The ratings they generated from these matches were clear aberrations and not consistent with what they had done all year.  Were these players injured?  Did they lose their ability to play?  Not the case at all.  Each player subsequently did well at Sectionals and Nationals against stronger competition going 5-2, 5-3, and 5-3 there.  Was it because One Doubles was outside?  No, their Sectionals and Nationals were outside too.

So it seems pretty clear that all 6 of the matches played were deliberately thrown in an effort to manage their ratings down.  There are not strong enough words one can use to condemn this behavior and since this is a blog and will live on forever on the Web somewhere, I'll refrain from going overboard, but it is very very sad to see someone stoop to this level as it isn't fair on numerous levels.

First, they are trying to defraud the system and manipulate their ratings so they can play at a level they shouldn't be eligible to.  This goes against the spirit and rules of USTA League.  No, the USTA isn't perfect, but when players play normally, the system works pretty well.

Second, it isn't fair to their competition who signed up for a league to play competitive matches.  Playing a match where your opponent is likely or apparently missing shots deliberately or goofing off or whatever they did to lose so badly is not achieving this goal and diminishing the experience of playing in the league.

Third, it isn't fair to their opponents and given how the system works, all of their opponents' opponents, etc., as it is skewing ratings that could lead to other players being bumped up or down that shouldn't.  For example, a 3.5 playing these very strong 4.0s and getting a 6-1,6-1 win is going to have their rating incorrectly go up which may lead to them being bumped up when they shouldn't be.

So I'm sure some of you are wondering, were they successful?  The answer is thankfully no, they were all bumped up to 4.5 at year-end, their Sectionals and Nationals results were good and moved their ratings back up from where they were after the One Doubles league.  Additionally, I have not verified this, but the USTA may have thrown these matches out as while the scores are still shown on TennisLink, it also seems to indicate the League Coordinator changed them to default wins for the opponents.  So it appears someone caught on and the team was DQ'd from play.  I'd hope the results were ignored for ratings purposes too give how they would skew results for others.  But should more be done?

In my view, what should happen in clear and blatant cases like this is the team/players should be DQ'd, the matches not used for ratings, and the players should be given a ban from playing in any USTA sanctioned event.  There is simply no place for behavior like this.  While I'm sure this situation is very much an exception and not the rule, it is one of the things that gives USTA League a black eye and the revenue lost from a hand full of players being banned is more than offset by keeping players that leave because of behavior like this and the improved and fair competition you'll get when these types of shenanigans are weeded out.

I do not know one way or the other if there has been any ban or reprimand at all in addition to the DQ'ing of the matches and team from the league.  I would hope so and if so, kudos to the USTA.  If not, please document rules that allow bans to be imposed in these situations so these types of players can be gotten rid of.

2014 USTA League year-end bump percentages for NTRP 3.5 broken out by section and gender - Interesting tennis league stats

I wrote about how the NTRP 4.0 level players were bumped up or down in the 2014 year-end NTRP ratings, now it is time for the 3.5s.



We can see that the men were bumped up and lot more than down, and had three sections with bump rtes over 18% and several more close behind.

The women weren't quite as extreme, but still had several sections with bump up rates over 15%.

Did this may 3.5s really improve that much?  Or is the USTA trying to weaken the level by moving all the better 3.5s out?

2014 USTA League year-end bump percentages for NTRP 4.0 now broken out by gender - Interesting tennis league stats

I wrote about the overall bump percentages for 4.0s in USTA League play this year-end, but grouping men and women together doesn't tell the whole picture.  So below are separate charts for men and women 4.0s showing the percentage of 2013 year-end 4.0s that were bumped down to 3.5 or up to 4.5.



We see some differences between the men (left) and women (right), although the top-4 sections for bump ups for both men and women are PNW, NorCal, SoCal, and Texas.  The PNW 4.0 men were given the highest percentage of bump ups by a healthy margin but the SoCal women, and even the NorCal women beat out the PNW.

The Caribbean women had the largest percentage bumped down, but the men were bumped up more. Perhaps Caribbean should be the early favorites for 3.5 women Nationals next year.

Interestingly, the Northern men had a high percentage of bump ups even though neither 18+ nor 40+ made the semis at Nationals.  They did finish second in their flight in 18+ but third in 40+ so this number of bump ups and the low percentage of bump downs for them is odd.

2014 USTA League year-end bump percentages for NTRP 4.0 - Interesting tennis league stats

Continuing on the break down of the 2014 year-end USTA League NTRP ratings bumps, below is a chart showing how the 4.0 level bumps occurred by section.

The Pacific Northwest led the way with the most bumps up, nearly 14% of 4.0s were bumped up, but that section also had over 7% bumped down which was not the least by any stretch, so there was movement both directions.

Southern and Northern California were next and interestingly, NorCal had even more bump downs as a percentage than PNW.  Texas was next with the 4th most bumps up.

These three sections did do well at 4.0 Nationals so it sort of makes sense.  But Caribbean had a large number of bump ups overall but was well back at the 4.0 level with more bump downs than up.

2014 USTA League year-end bump percentages by level - Interesting tennis league stats

I've written about the year-end bump percentages by state and section, so the next logic step is to look at them by NTRP level.

It is probably no surprise that the lower levels have more bump ups than down, and the higher levels have more down than up.  It looks like 4.0 is where it is most balanced, about the same number of bump ups as down.

How did this compare with last year?

There were quite a few more bumps this year than last.  Last year, 5.01% of 4.0s were bumped down and 4.83% were bumped up.  This year, 7.8% down and 8.37% up.  So a greater number moved, and the bias went from slightly down to slightly up.

More to come.