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.

Checking USTA League self-rated men by section - Who sandbags or overrates?

I wrote a few days ago about trends with self-rated players being bumped up or down at a national level and also took a look at the trends for each section for the women.  Now it is time to look at the men in each section.

As a reminder, these charts are showing the number of players by level that self-rated in 2015 and stayed the same at year-end as well as are bumped up and down.  On each bar the number shows the percentage for each category by level.

As a refresher to start, here is the national chart for the men:

We see the trend of a lot more bumps up than down at the 2.5 thru 3.5 levels, and then it becomes balanced at 4.0 and a slight bias towards bump downs above that.  Based on this, one could observe that perhaps at lower levels, the men tend to underrate or sandbag a bit.

But do these same trends hold true at the section level?  Here are the same stats for each section in reverse alphabetical order.

Texas:

Texas looks a lot like the National chart, except they have a few more bump ups at 2.5, 3.0, and 3.5.

Southwest:

At the 2.5 and 3.0 levels, Southwest pushing things a bit more with over 90% and 40% respectively being bumped up.

Southern:

Southern actually has more balance at 3.5 than National averages or the two other sections above.

Southern Cal:

SoCal doesn't have a lot of players self-rate at 2.5 or 3.0, but a huge percentage of them get bumped up.  Do they just improve a lot playing in the California sun or is there some sandbagging going on?

Pacific Northwest:

PNW has looks like others and National at 2.5 and 3.0, but actually has more 3.5s bumped down than up!

Northern:

This looks similar to National and others, except that there are more self-rated 4.0 men than any other level and more than twice as many were bumped up than down.

NorCal:

This looks a lot like the National chart, nothing really stands out.

New England:

Hardly any 2.5s aren't bumped up, but otherwise quite similar.

Missouri Valley:

Very similar to the National chart.

Midwest:

Again, very similar to the National chart.  Are men this consistent across sections unlike the women?

Middle States:

For the first time, more 2.5s stay 2.5 than are bumped up.  Otherwise, similar to National.

Mid-Atlantic:

The 3.5 men are more balanced than more others, and a few more 4.0s are bumped down.

Intermountain:

Intermountain men are balanced at 3.5 and quite a few more 4.0s are bumped down than up.

Hawaii:

We finally have one that is significantly different.  All 2.5s are bumped up and nearly 2/3 of 3.0s and nearly a third of 3.5s and virtual no-one is bumped down!

Florida:

Sort of back to normal, but there are a lot of 2.5s and 3.0s bumped up.

Eastern:

Eastern is also fairly normal although nearly all 2.5s are bumped up.

Caribbean:

Similar to the Caribbean women, a lot of players self-rate at 2.5, and a ton of 2.5 and 3.0 self-rated men do get bumped up.  It is no surprise they do so well at Nationals at these levels.

Remarkably, the men do not show as much variation by section as the women do.  Apart from Hawaii and Caribbean, most look similar to the National averages.

What do you think?

Checking USTA League self-rated women by section - Who sandbags or overrates?

I wrote a few days ago about trends with self-rated players being bumped up or down at a national level.  That revealed some interesting observations, notably that men seem to underrate a bit at 3.0 and 3.5 levels while women tend to overrate at the same levels.

But that is Nationally.  Do the same trends hold at the section level?

You knew I couldn't leave that one alone, so we will start with the women and look at the breakdown by section.  As a reminder, these charts are showing the number of players by level that self-rated in 2015 and stayed the same at year-end as well as are bumped up and down.  On each bar the number shows the percentage for each category by level.

As a refresher to start, here is the national chart for the women:

Now, we'll just go through the sections alphabetically.

Caribbean:

A vast majority of players in the Caribbean self-rate at 2.5!  And nearly 2/3 of these players arguably underrate as they get bumped up at year-end.  Now, it is easy to improve significantly at 2.5 and it may be natural for beginners to self-rate at 2.5, but this is still a remarkable statistic.  Interestingly, it appears more women self-rate at 3.5 than 3.0, and unlike the national trend more women get bumped up than down.

This whole chart in fact looks more like the men's chart where one could conclude there is sandbagging going on.  Is there sandbagging amongst the women in the Caribbean?  Is this in part why they won 18+ 3.0 Nationals last weekend?

Eastern:

This chart looks a lot more similar to the national chart, although at 3.0 a few more self-rated women are bumped up than down, but at the 3.5 level, hardly any get bumped up.

Florida:

Florida looks even more like then national chart, a trend of a few more self-rated women being bumped down than up.

Hawaii:

Another ratings "island" so to speak like Caribbean, there is again more of a trend towards bump ups, even into the 4.0 level.  But a lot more players self-rate at 3.5.  Perhaps Hawaiian women also underrate slightly?

Intermountain:

This section also has a lot of players self-rate at 2.5, but doesn't have a huge number of them get bumped up.  And at 3.0, 3.5, and 4.0 levels, a far larger number of self-rated women get bumped down than up.  So far, this is the most extreme case of potential overrating.

Mid-Atlantic:

Mid-Atlantic has a slight bias towards underrating, particularly at 3.0, which also could have contributed to making the final at 18+ 3.0 this past weekend.

Middle States:

This section is pretty balanced, just a modest number more self-rated women being bumped down at 3.5 and a larger number at 4.0.

Midwest:

Midwest has a slightly larger number of 2.5s bumped up, and at 3.0 does have a few more bumped up, but goes back to the national trend of more bump downs at 3.5 and 4.0.

Missouri Valley:

This section is similar to Midwest with more 3.0s being bumped up, but more 3.5s and 4.0s being bumped down.

New England:

New England has a lot of women self-rate at 3.0 and they do it quite accurately it appears.  The general trend at other levels applies.  With so many players joining at 3.0, it is perhaps not a surprise they made the semis at 18+ Nationals this year.

Northern California:

In NorCal we see some underrating at 3.0 like a few other sections and a lot of 2.5s bumped up, but otherwise like the national averages.

Northern:

Northern is interesting as the vast majority of women self-rate at 3.5 unlike most others.  More of those self-rated 3.0s get bumped down that up though.

Pacific Northwest:

In the PNW, we see a few more 3.0s bumped up, but a lot more self-rated women 3.5s bumped down.  They also made the semis at 3.0 with the slight bias of more bump ups.  But PNW won the 3.5 level this year where a lot of players got bumped down last year.

Southern California:

SoCal also has more 3.5s, but not like Northern, and at 3.0 a lot of players, nearly a 1/3, get bumped up.  Perhaps more should be self-rating at 3.5!

Southern:

Southern looks pretty normal, just a few more 3.0s bumped up, but the section is so large you'd expect it to look a lot like the national averages.

Southwest:

Southwest has a lot of 2.5s bumped up and interestingly goes against the national averages at both 3.0 and 3.5 with a few more self-rated women bumped up than down.

Texas:

Texas look fairly normal and close to the national averages, just a few more bumped up at 2.5 and 3.0.

So we see a few surprises, and some of the sections that seem to underrate at 3.0 and 3.5 did do well at Nationals this year.

What do you think?

Do USTA League self-rated players self-rate correctly? Do men sandbag and women over rate?

2016 USTA League Nationals are going on in full force, and unfortunately that means a few cases of questionable self-rated players comes up.  This blog post is not to identify any individuals or teams that have manipulated the rules, but instead to start analysis of self-rated players and how accurately they self-rate.

To start, I've taken a look at the self-rated players in 2015 to see how many ended up being bumped up or down.  While it is possible for a player to self-rate correctly and be bumped up or down, you'd expect the majority to end the year at the level they self-rated if they were at the right level, so for the purposes of this analysis, that is the criteria we'll use.

In each of the charts below, there is a bar whose height is the number of self-rated players by level that were bumped down, stayed the same level, or bumped up at year-end.  The annotation on each bar is the percentage of players at that level for that category.

First, here is a chart showing these stats for all self-rated players in 2015, men and women.

We see that more players self-rated at 3.5 than any other level, around 10 thousand of them, and 69% of those stayed 3.5 at year-end and 15% each were bumped up and down.  The 3.0s saw 65% of the just over 9 thousand players stay 3.0s and 21% bumped up and 14% down.  At the 2.5 level, no one was bumped down (I think think the USTA ever gives someone a 2.0 year-end rating) but a whopping 39% of 2.5s were bumped up.

Moving above 3.5, we see the trend change and a higher percentage of players rating correctly with over 70% at each of 4.0, 4.5, and 5.0, but we also see more players being bumped down rather than up.

Based on this, one could conclude that players at the lower levels have a harder time self-rating correctly, likely because players tend to naturally improve more quickly at the lower levels, than at the higher levels.  And that natural improvement can also explain the larger number of players being bumped up than down at the lower levels, but the higher levels have more bump downs is interesting.  Perhaps this is because some of the self-rate guidelines require some players to self-rate higher than their ability just because they have to check the 'played in college' box.

Now, the above chart is including both men and women.  I don't think it is safe to assume the self-rate behavior is the same for both sexes, so I took a look at them separately.  And they were more different than I expected!

Here is the chart for the women.

First, we see more women self-rate at 3.0 than any other level with nearly 6 thousand.  We also see that the number of players that stay at the same level, i.e. self-rate correctly, never gets to 70%.

On the bumps up vs down, while there are a lot of 2.5s that get bumped up, it is a lower percentage at 33% than the combined 39% above.  And this trend continues with more 3.0s being bumped down than up, 18% to 14%, and the gap becomes larger at 3.5 with 21% being bumped down and 11% up.  This gap gets even larger at 4.0.

So one could make the observation that it appears women are more likely to over rate themselves as evidenced by more being bumped down that up at every level a bump down is possible.

And then the men.

The men have a lot more that self-rate at 3.5 and there are even more 4.0s than 3.0s.  And then men have right around 75% of self-rates at the 4.0 and higher levels do so correctly.

On the bumps up/down we see a complete turnaround from the women with more players being bumped up at 2.5, 3.0, and 3.5 and it only becoming equal at 4.0.  A whopping 70% of self-rated 2.5 men get bumped up and nearly a third of 3.0s do.  Even at 3.5, nearly 20% were bumped up.

This would seem to support the notion that men are more likely to rate too low and be "sandbaggers" in an effort to win and care less about having a higher rating next to their name.  This is particularly true at 2.5 and 3.0 where far fewer men self-rate correctly than the women, but even at 3.5 where a good 71% of players self-rate correctly, those that don't err on the side of rating too low.

What do you think?  Does this match your observations in your area?  Are the observations by sex fair generalizations of how men and women self-rate?

Stay tuned for more, I plan to look at this data by section to see if any tendencies stand out.

How many matches do captains play? - Interesting Tennis League Stats

I recently wrote about what court captains play on the most, so I decided to look at how many matches captains play in.

The chart below shows how many captains played various percentages of their teams matches.

The percent range with the largest count is the 60-79%, so a lot of captains play in 2/3 to 3/4 of their team's matches.  Remarkably, there are some that play in none, and some that play in less than 20% of their team's matches.  And there are perhaps a surprising number that play in every team match.

If we look at the counts by range for non-captains we see it is a bit different.

Here the range with the most is 40-59%, so a bit lower.  And there are more than play in none relatively speaking, but fewer that play in all of the matches.

So it is safe to say that captains do play themselves more on average than they play the non-captains on the team.  Captaining comes with benefits! :)  This is probably no surprise, but the charts certainly confirm it.

As a captain, are you likely to play yourself more?  Or if you aren't a captain, does your's play themselves more or less than the rest of their roster?

What court do captains play on most often? - Interesting Tennis League Stats

While watching a USTA League match this evening, I got to wondering where captains happen to play themselves most often.  I've written in the past about where captains rate compared to the average by gender and level, so I thought it would be interesting to look at this.

Just looking at 18+ and 40+ matches from 2015 where it was a 2 singles and 3 doubles format, it breaks out as shown below.

For both men and women, captains played most often on court 1 doubles and way more often on a doubles court than singles.  What is a little interesting is that women captains appear to play on the top courts at a higher rate than men; women play court 1 or 2 doubles 39% and 29% more often than 3 doubles, while men play court 1 or 2 doubles 14% and 16% more often than 3 doubles.

From the earlier analysis on strength of captains, they were not generally stronger than average other than at the 3.0 level, so it appears captains either feel they are stronger than they are and play themselves on what is perceived to be the stronger courts, or they are more willing to take one for the team and let other players get wins on court 3.

If you are a captain, what court do you typically play on and why?

Playing in multiple areas, districts, and sections - Interesting Tennis League Stats

In generating Estimated Dynamic NTRP Rating Reports, I often see players that play in more than one are, some in more than one district or state, and even some that play in multiple sections.  Given the geography of the United States and how the section/district/area boundaries are defined, it can happen more often than you think, although it is typically in more densely populated areas.

For example, in the Mid-Atlantic section, Maryland, Virginia, and Washington D.C. are each separate districts and are close enough that some players will play in all three.  And in Maryland each county is a separate area so players can easily play in several.

Or you have sections like Middle States and Eastern, or Eastern and New England, that are very close and players can easily play in multiple.

Even in a less densely populated state like Washington, we have separate districts for Northwest and Southwest Washington, and some players will play in both.

To get an idea of how often it happens, I took a look at the 2015 league year 18+, 40+, and 55+ leagues to see what some of the largest numbers were and if there were any surprises.

First, looking at sections, the vast majority of players, over 99%, play in only one section.  But over 2,300 played in two sections in 2015 leagues, and 8 players played in three sections.  Of those 8, most appear to be situations where someone winters in the south, for example, there were several that were Eastern/Middle States/Florida or New England/Eastern/Florida.

Next, looking at districts (states in Southern), the most played in was 4, and that occurred 50 times.  There were nearly 600 that played in 3 districts and over 7,000 played in 2, but the vast majority play in only 1.  I was actually a little surprised that the largest was only 4, but districts are pretty big areas, so perhaps more would be unexpected.

Last, looking at areas, there were two players that played in a whopping 7 and nine that played in 6.  Both of the players that played in 7 did so in Mid-Atlantic, both predominantly using Maryland's separate counties to do so, but did both include NOVA.

How many different area/districts/sections do you play in?

Do stronger players in USTA League play singles or doubles? Interesting Tennis League Stats

In my work generating reports but also in questions I get in e-mail in response to my NTRP Ratings FAQ, a question I often get asked is if a player should play singles or doubles to improve their rating the most.  There is no clear answer, it all depends on the ratings of the players in the match and the score, and some players are simply better singles players than doubles or vice versa, so there is no golden rule.

However, I've told lots of people that singles can offer more opportunity to improve your rating as stronger players typically play singles.  This is the conventional wisdom, that the best players play singles, so beating them will result in a better match rating than beating lower rated players on a doubles court.  There are exceptions to this of course as the rating of your partner matters too, but I wanted to test this conventional wisdom to see if it was indeed true.

So, I looked at 2015 leagues in the 18 & over division, and used my Estimated Dynamic NTRP Ratings as of the end of 2015 to calculate the average rating by court for each gender.

In the charts below, I show the average for each NTRP level showing 1S, 2S, 1D, 2D, then 3D in the groupings.  I've also normalized the ratings to be relative to the bottom of each level so that the relative strength within the levels can easily be compared.

First the men.

From the chart, it is pretty clear that the strongest court on average is court 1 singles, and that the lower courts (2 and 3) have lower rated players on average than higher courts.  What is interesting is that court 2 singles is on average lower than court 1 doubles, but it is stronger than court 2 doubles.

Another interesting datapoint is that at the 5.0 level, there is a little aberration from the norm and court 3 doubles is actually slightly stronger than court 2 singles or doubles.  Note that a lot of 5.0 leagues are just 1 singles court and 2 doubles courts though so that likely skews these numbers some.

But back to singles vs doubles, this chart would seem to largely support the notion that stronger players play singles, except that court 1 doubles is usually stronger than court 2 singles.

Another interesting observation is that as the NTRP level increases, the average rating for every court is less and less above the bottom of the level.  This sort of makes sense, since I used year-end ratings, these reflect how much players have improved during the year, and 2.5s and 3.0s are going to improve a lot more than 4.5s and 5.0s.  Also, at the higher levels the distribution of players is going to be at the lower end of the level.

Last, it appears captains do generally play straight-up and play stronger players on the lower numbered courts.  The USTA does not require this, captains can and do stack their courts to try and steal a win, but it doesn't look like stacking is done nearly enough to skew the data much at all.

Now the women.

The women look largely the same, but sometimes court 2 doubles has a higher average than court 1 singles which was not the case for the men.  The women also seem to fall off a bit more on court 3 doubles than the men.

So there is a slight bias towards singles being stronger than doubles, but not nearly as distinct as for the men.

Also, the women seem to have generally slightly lower averages across the board on each court.  My hypothesis would be (from experience doing reports and looking at where players play) that more women play up than men and so this pulls the averages down.  But I'll do some research to confirm this soon.

How many games does a team winning 5-0 lose? Interesting tennis league stats

I've written about how often a winning team wins 5-0 vs 4-1 vs 3-2, but I came across a match where a team not only won 5-0, but only lost 12 games, and got curious how often that or similar scenarios occur.

So I went about looking at all matches in 18 & over and 40 & over in 2015 where the winning team won 5-0 and are matches were completed, e.g. no defaults or retirements where the score would not represent a complete match, and did it for both Men and Women, and here is the result.

First the men:

We see that losing just 12 games happened 15 times, so certainly not common, but some teams gave up even fewer, the fewest being just 6 games which happened once.  So losing just 12 is impressive and in the 98th percentile, but not the best that has occurred.

We also see that the mid-point is right around 30 with a big chunk between 25 and 35 which makes sense.  Losing a total of 30 games over 5 matches would mean on average winning 6-3,6-3.

At the other extreme we see a few at/over 50 games lost, the most being 56.  That is a pretty difficult task as that is over 11 games per court being lost without losing a court.  Note that this one was a match where 3rd sets were played out so that made it easier.  The most with 3rd set tie-breaks was 52 with 4 of the courts going to a 3rd set.

On to the women: 

This chart looks very similar, a standard bell curve as you'd expect, but there was a team that gave up 0 games in winning a match!  The match was in a 40+ 3.0 league in Texas and TennisLink shows all courts as completed so if the scores were entered right, it appears it happened.

The mid-point for the ladies seems to be centered slightly lower around 28, but on the high end there was a match where the winning team won every court but lost 60 games!  This was in Southern and yes, they did play out the 3rd sets.  The most where the 3rd set was a match tie-break was 54 and every court did go to a match tie-break.

What are you experiences with a team winning 5-0 and losing very few or a lot of games?