What USTA League players will be bumped up/down Monday when ratings are published?

The USTA League season wrapped up back in November and now that we've had Thanksgiving, it is time for year-end NTRP ratings to be published!

Word is that ratings should be published on Monday December 2nd, my guess is towards the end of the day, and a lot of people will be interested to see where they end up.  Some players had good years and are anticipating (or afraid of?) being bumped up, others had middle of the road seasons and expect to stay the same, while others perhaps had losing seasons and are afraid (or hoping?) for a bump down.

My ratings, while not perfect, are a very good indicator of where a player's rating will end up, and I can do still do reports for player's wanting to see where they will end up, or looking for an explanation of why they ended up where they did.

But, we can also look historically at some statistics of how past years have ended up to get an idea of what will happen this year.

What follows is a table showing bump down/up percentages by year and level for the past few years.

	2018		2017		2016
Level	Up	Down	Up	Down	Up	Down
2.5	35%	0%	32%	0%	29%	0%
3.0	14%	3.1%	14%	2.9%	14%	3.1%
3.5	7.6%	4.1%	7.2%	4.0%	7.8%	3.7%
4.0	4.7%	5.9%	4.3%	5.7%	4.8%	5.2%
4.5	4.4%	8.2%	3.9%	8.3%	3.6%	7.8%
5.0	1.9%	17%	1.6%	17%	1.7%	17%
5.5	0.7%	39%	0%	36%	0%	45%

We see the percentages are quite consistent for most levels, but in general there have been a slight increase in bump ups the past two years, and the bump downs have also had a small increase at several levels.

But given how consistent the bump percentages have been, it is probably pretty safe to assume 2019 will show very similar bump percentages as shown above.

Stay tuned, I'll be posting more stats and observations once year-end ratings are published.

Update: Updated the above table in this post adding in 2019 for comparison.

How competitive are USTA League matches? Interesting tennis league stats

USTA League tennis is level based using the NTRP (National Tennis Rating Program) system and is design to promote competitive play for recreational players.  That begs the question, how competitive is the play?

I've looked at the competitiveness of matches before in writing about playing up and its effect on scores, that analysis looking at how close scores are.  That showed that 60-80% of matches were close depending on your definition.

But another measure is a player's individual record and this is a statistic more people are familiar with and tend to track.  In an ideal world, one might expect that every player would have a winning percentage right around 50% since everyone winning and losing half their matches would indicate the matches must have been competitive.  We know in reality that isn't going to happen, and to be honest, being competitive doesn't mean you are winning and losing the same amount, as while it is fairly unlikely this would happen, you could have competitive matches (say 6-4,6-4 scores) and lose every match or win every match.

I couldn't just leave this one alone though, I had to do some analysis.  Below is a chart showing the distribution of winning percentages from 18 & Over and 40 & Over play for 2017 for players that played at least 5 matches.

We see that nearly half of the players do win between 35% and 65% of their matches.  If you extend it out to 25% to 75%, the number jump up to 70% of players.  So if your measure of competitiveness is match winning percentage, 70% of players appear to have a competitive experience.

It is interesting that the number of players in the ~40% and ~60% bands is larger than those in the ~50%.  I'm not sure a good explanation for this other than any player playing 5, 7, or 9 matches in the year cannot fall in the ~50% band, so perhaps that is it.

Note that with a fair number of players playing up, the handful of players with very poor/excellent records is perhaps not surprising.  You would expect some number of uncompetitive matches from these matches.

But even with the range for each NTRP level, when at-level higher rated players play lower rated ones, you will see lopsided results quite often and this is somewhat expected.

It is always interesting to see how the different genders fare with these sort of stats, so here are the women.

And the men.

There are slight variations, but really, no significant differences for men vs women.

What do you think?  Is the distribution of winning percentages what you would expect?  Do you think USTA League matches are generally competitive?  Or are the ranges for the NTRP levels too large?

If you win the second set, are you more likely to win the match tie-break? Interesting tennis league stats

In USTA League tennis, the majority of matches are played with a 3-set format where a match tie-break (first to 10 win by 2) is played in lieu of a full third set.

I've often wondered, and sometimes been asked, if the player/pair winning the second set has a better chance of winning the tie-break because they have the momentum, or if the player/pair winning the first rests up in the second and they come back, or if anything really can happen in a tie-break and it is a toss-up.  Well it is time to do some research and find out!

For this analysis I'm going to look at matches played in 2017 in the 18 & Over leagues and just look at the percentage of time the winner of the first/second set win the tie-break.

First, just looking at all matches played, the data tells us that 49.4 percent of first set winners win the tie-break, while 50.6 percent of second set winners do.  Statistically, this says it is a toss-up, although one might argue a slight bias towards the second set winners.

But what if we slice the data different ways?  First, by gender:

• Male - 49.1% for first set winners, 50.9% for second set winners
• Female - 49.%% vs 50.5%

So there is the same general toss-up but perhaps slight bias for the women.

Then by level:

• 2.5 - 52.9 vs 47.1
• 3.0 - 49.6 vs 50.4
• 3.5 - 49.3 vs 50.7
• 4.0 - 49.1 vs 50.9
• 4.5 - 49.3 vs 50.7
• 5.0 - 46.9 vs 53.1

Only at the extremes of 2.5 and 5.0 do we see the data stray from the general averages, and there are far fewer matches at these levels so there is a greater chance for some outlier data the skew things.  But even at these levels, there is not a dramatic advantage to either set winner, although interestingly at 2.5 the second set winner wins the match less often!

I did also look at the data by gender and level but nothing stood out, it was consistent with the above.

So it appears there is certainly not a dramatic advantage to the second set winner in a match tie-break, but perhaps an ever so slight one.  Like they say, anything can happen in a tie-break!

The path to USTA League Nationals: How it varies by section

We are getting to the time of the year when playoffs are being played, be they local playoffs, Districts, or Sectionals, all in the pursuit of making it to Nationals.  I sometimes get asked about the path to Nationals or how one can get there, so I thought I'd write on the subject.

I've written bits and pieces before including how short the journey can be in Hawaii, but also how other rural areas can have similarly short paths to Nationals.  But I hadn't taken a comprehensive look across all the sections to compare them so thought I would.

First, I thought I'd take a look at one of the league type/level that is most played across the country, 18 & Over 3.5 women.

Here is a table with several stats for the teams from each section that went to Nationals.  It shows the team matches played in the regular season and playoffs, the number of championships (e.g. local playoffs, States/Districts, Sectionals) that had to be played, and the number of flights played at championships.  The latter stat tells you if a team for example had to play both a round-robin flight and then a semis and/or final flight at a championship.

Section	Matches	Championships	Flights
NO. CALIFORNIA	26	2	2
PACIFIC NW	21	2	3
MIDWEST	21	2	2
SOUTHWEST	20	2	2
TEXAS	19	3	4
FLORIDA	18	2	4
MIDDLE STATES	18	2	3
SOUTHERN	18	3	5
EASTERN	17	3	3
INTERMOUNTAIN	17	3	4
MID ATLANTIC	17	2	3
SO. CALIFORNIA	17	2	2
NEW ENGLAND	16	2	4
MISSOURI VALLEY	15	2	2
NORTHERN	15	1	2
CARIBBEAN	12	1	1
HAWAII	10	1	1

The Northern California team had to play a whopping 26 matches to get to Nationals!  Several others had to play 20 or more and there are a lot in the upper teens.  Hawaii almost made it playing just single digits!

For comparison, here are the 3.5 men.

Section	Matches	Championships	Flights
NO. CALIFORNIA	23	2	2
SOUTHERN	22	2	3
MISSOURI VALLEY	22	2	2
MID ATLANTIC	21	2	2
MIDWEST	19	3	3
PACIFIC NW	18	2	3
SO. CALIFORNIA	18	2	2
EASTERN	17	3	3
NEW ENGLAND	16	2	2
HAWAII	16	1	1
TEXAS	16	2	3
SOUTHWEST	15	2	2
NORTHERN	14	1	2
INTERMOUNTAIN	14	2	2
MIDDLE STATES	14	2	2
CARIBBEAN	11	1	1

We see that four sections had to play over 20 matches to get to Nationals, while some were in the low to mid-teens, Caribbean having the easiest path with just 11 matches and one championship played.  Interestingly Eastern had three championships to play, but only got to 17 total matches to qualify for Nationals.

What about at a level where there are fewer players and teams like 5.0 men?

Section	Matches	Championships	Flights
MIDWEST	23	3	3
MID ATLANTIC	17	2	2
NO. CALIFORNIA	17	2	2
PACIFIC NW	15	2	3
INTERMOUNTAIN	14	2	2
SOUTHERN	13	3	4
TEXAS	13	2	2
FLORIDA	10	1	1
SO. CALIFORNIA	10	1	1
MIDDLE STATES	10	2	2
EASTERN	9	1	1
SOUTHWEST	9	1	1
MISSOURI VALLEY	9	1	1

The Midwest appears to be very competitive for 5.0 men, they are the only section with over 20 matches and well ahead of the rest.  We see three sections not even having to play double digits to get there.

What about 40 & Over?  Here are the 4.0 women.

Section	Matches	Championships	Flights
NO. CALIFORNIA	24	3	3
MIDDLE STATES	20	2	2
MISSOURI VALLEY	19	3	3
TEXAS	19	2	4
MIDWEST	19	3	4
EASTERN	18	3	3
INTERMOUNTAIN	18	3	4
NEW ENGLAND	16	2	3
SOUTHWEST	16	2	2
SOUTHERN	15	2	4
FLORIDA	14	1	3
HAWAII	14	1	1
MID ATLANTIC	14	2	3
SO. CALIFORNIA	14	2	2
NORTHERN	12	1	2
CARIBBEAN	10	1	1
PACIFIC NW	9	2	3

Northern Cal is over 20 and in the lead again.  Note that they classified their local playoffs as a championship this once (they normally just treat it as an extension of the regular season) so they also show three championships played.  And we see another single digit matches played, this one from the Pacific Northwest which seems odd.  But this is a case of a team from a small/rural area where the regular season is just four matches played over a weekend.

And to round things out, here are the 4.0 men for 40 & Over.

Section	Matches	Championships	Flights
NO. CALIFORNIA	21	4	4
SOUTHERN	19	2	3
EASTERN	16	2	2
MIDDLE STATES	16	2	2
NEW ENGLAND	15	2	2
HAWAII	15	1	1
INTERMOUNTAIN	15	3	4
PACIFIC NW	15	2	3
MIDWEST	15	3	3
TEXAS	14	1	2
MISSOURI VALLEY	13	2	2
FLORIDA	13	1	3
SOUTHWEST	13	1	1
NORTHERN	12	1	1
MID ATLANTIC	12	1	1
CARIBBEAN	11	1	1
SO. CALIFORNIA	11	2	2

Northern Cal again in the lead.

What can we learn from this?  The path to Nationals can be very different based on where a team is from.  The longest path is usually over twice as long as the shortest path.  There is a fair amount of consistency in which sections have the longest path, but still some variability there if a team from a small area manages to advance.

If there is interest, I can look at other league types and levels, let me know by leaving a comment.

When in the year do you play your USTA League matches? Matches per month across all the sections

Those of you reading my blog are probably well aware of, and play in, USTA League, and know that the main advancing leagues (Adult 18+, 40+, 55+) have league play during the year culminating in USTA League Nationals typically in October/November.

Since this is a yearly event, you'd expect the regular season league play to occur earlier in the year, say January thru June, and then the various stages of playoffs occur from July thru September leading to Nationals.  And in fact, this is the case in many, but not all, sections as you'll see below.  Additionally, when the different age divisions play varies by section, some doing them in parallel and some sequentially.

To see how different it is across sections, I've created some charts to visually see when each section has its 18+, 40+, and 55+ regular season matches scheduled.  This is looking at 2017 for just the three Adult age divisions and is just scheduled dates for regular season matches and calculating the number of team matches per month.

Note that looking at the section level you get different districts that may do things differently blended together.  If there is interest (leave comments!), I may drill into a few sections and see how things vary at the district level.

Let me know what you think of the below and when your league matches are played.

Because I'm in the Pacific Northwest, we'll start there.

We see that 55+ is an early start league across the board, playing in the Fall.  Then both 18+ and 40+ are played a lot in the first three months of the year, but 18+ peaks in April and May while 40+ has the bulk of its matches in Jan-Mar.

Southern is the largest section, we'll go there next.

This is one long "2017" season!  They take early start leagues to an extreme, Georgia starting back in May, and other districts have early start leagues too in the Fall, but the bulk of the play is in the Winter/Spring for all age divisions.  We also see that across the whole section, there are approaching ten thousand team matches played in March, far and away the most of any section/month.

Next, Northern California.

With just a bit of overlap, NorCal has 40+, then 18+, then 55+.  All very orderly and consistent.  Just a few early start leagues in Reno I believe not in the calendar year.

Staying in California, Southern Cal is next.

SoCal is also for the most part very orderly, 40+, then 18+, with 55+ sprinkled in and some mis-categorized leagues in the Fall.

Going to another good sized section next, Mid-Atlantic.

This section fits all in the calendar year and is fairly consistent with some played early in the year, but the bulk of 18+ in the Spring and 40+ in the early Summer.

Another large geographic section is Midwest.

There are a fair number of early start leagues in the Fall, and both 18+ and 40+ are spread across the whole season.  It is not clear from this if they are run in parallel in all districts/areas though.

A fair amount of tennis is played in Florida, here is when their matches are played.

They too are playing a lot of leagues at the same time, although the raw number of team matches is not exceptionally high in any month so each district/area could spread them out locally.

Missouri Valley is another section covering a bunch of states.

This section has quite a few early start leagues and is playing 18+ matches regularly throughout the season.  40+ and 55+ are more in the Spring.

Next up, Eastern.

Here the bulk of the matches, 18+, 40+, and 55+ are played in the Spring and early Summer, with a small amount of 18+ played earlier in the year and as early start leagues.

Next, Intermountain.

With snowy winters, not much advancing league play is done indoors it appears which compresses 18+ and 40+ each into just 8-10 week seasons with a little overlap.

Speaking of long winters, here is New England.

Clearly they play indoors with a fair amount of all three leagues played in the Winter and early Spring, but the most is still played in the late Spring and early Summer, a lot in parallel it appears.

Another cold section is Northern.

They play a lot indoors as part of early start leagues, but a fair amount in the late Spring and Summer too.  That absence of matches in April is quite odd though.

Heading south, here is Texas.

Texas has a fair number of early start leagues for 18+ then 40+ is played more in the first three months followed by the rest or a second round of 18+.

Adjacent to Texas is Southwest.

Southwest doesn't play much in the Summer, just some 55+, and 40+ is centered on the Fall/Winter while 18+ is Fall/Spring.

Next up, Middle States.

There is a smattering of early start leagues in this section, but they load up on their advancing leagues in the Spring and early Summer.

Last, on to the "Island Sections", first Caribbean.

Caribbean is very logical, 40+ to start the year, then 18+ and 55+ in the Spring and early Summer.

And that leaves Hawaii.

Also logical, more or less like Caribbean.

There you have it, when each section plays their matches for the different age divisions!

How many USTA League teams do you captain?

Captaining a USTA League team is often a thankless job.

Captains have a long list of duties including recruiting and assembling a team, getting players signed up, scheduling, coordinating availability and juggling line-ups (e.g. egos and expectations), arranging practices/courts, communicating with other captains, knowing the rules, and so much more.  And all this is done in exchange for getting to play recreational tennis, perhaps some post season glory, and in some sections a thank you gesture/gift from the USTA at the end of the season.

Nevertheless, many captains come back for more every year, doing it again and again.  At my club, there is sort of a repeating set of captains with "Bob" captaining the 40+ 4.0 team while "Sam" captains the 18+ 4.0 team, and "Bob" and "Sue" captain the 40+ 8.0 Mixed team, etc.  The burden is spread out, and with a few exceptions, generally no one captains more than two teams in a year.

I happened to be looking at some captaining stats though and there are some captains that love the game so much, or perhaps love the "power" being captain gives them, that they captain many more than a few teams every year.  Looking back to 2015, I found 11 players that captained 40 or more teams since then, and that is including 2018 which is just getting started!  I even found several that captained 19 teams in 2017!

You might ask how this is possible?  Well, it helps if you are 55+, as you can easily see how you could get to six teams captaining 18+, 40+, and 55+, each in Adult and Mixed.  And some captains will captain an at-level team or playing up too, or multiple levels in combined leagues like Mixed and 55+.  Add to that that some areas have multiple seasons for a given league and the number goes up even more.  Some players live in parts of the country where they can play in multiple areas/districts/sections so that brings more opportunities.  And then there are alternate leagues like Combo, Tri-Level, and Singles.  Regardless, 19 is still a lot!

Captains will use lots of tools from simple spreadsheets to Web-sites that help coordinate availability, practices, and matches, and some get my reports to aid in recruiting and managing their team or scouting opponents.  Still it is not easy, so thank your captain for what they do, and try to be responsive when they e-mail and ask for who can play when.

How many teams to you captain?  How many would be too many?

In pursuit of the perfect USTA League season - Does it ever happen?

I recently heard a question asking if a USTA League team has ever won every court all year.  Going into a season, that is certainly the goal, but you would expect it to rarely if ever happen, simply because the NTRP rating system is aiming to have players of similar ability playing each other, and if that is the case you wouldn't think a team could win every court for an entire season.

Naturally, I had to go research it though!  I took a look at 2017 for the 18+ and 40+ divisions to first see if any teams had perfect regular seasons that played at least five team matches.  I found just nine teams that met this criteria:

• An 18+ 4.5 men's team from Idaho went 6-0/30-0 in a two team league
• A 40+ 4.0 men's team from New Jersey went 8-0/40-0 in a two team league
• An 18+ 2.5 women's team from Seattle went 8-0/24-0 in a nine team league
• A 40+ 4.0 men's team from Alabama went 7-0/35-0 in a two team league
• An 18+ 3.5 women's team from Atlanta went 7-0/35-0 in an eight team league
• A 40+ 4.5+ women's team from Louisiana went 6-0/18-0 in a two team league
• An 18+ 2.5 women's team from North Carolina went 9-0/27-0 in a four team league
• A 40+ 4.5+ men's team from Wisconsin went 7-0/35-0 in a two team league
• A 40+ 3.5 men's team from Georgia went 6-0/15-0 (yes half the matches were two courts) in a two team league

We see a full 2/3 of these teams come from two team leagues, and not to discount the accomplishment, but these leagues are often an A and B team, the B team there just to get the A team qualified to advance.

But regardless of how they achieved the perfect regular season, how did these teams do as they advanced?

A number of teams made it to Sectionals and even Nationals, but only one kept perfect run going to Sectionals and that was the Wisconsin 4.5+ team.  They had one local playoff they won 5-0 and went to Sectionals where they had their only loss of the season there falling short of Nationals and ended up losing six total courts.

The Seattle 2.5 team made it to Nationals, but lost courts along the way but did make the semis at Nationals.

So last year at least, there was no perfect season and really, no one terribly close.  And it looks like those perfect season from two team leagues generally did not prepare a team for playoffs as only one of those six teams even made a decent run to Sectionals.

Conversations About Tennis with Carl Bialik - Podcast with me on USTA Ratings!

If you've followed sports/political statistics, you've probably come across Carl Bialik, a journalist who has written for the Wall Street Journal, Sports Illustrated, and FiveThirtyEight among others.  He has a passion for tennis though and has a regular podcast, Thirty Love: Conversations About Tennis, where he talks with guests on a variety of tennis related topics.

He contacted me recently about recording a podcast with him to discuss USTA League and NTRP ratings and I agreed, and you can now listen to it on his site or on iTunes.

Thanks Carl!

New Report! - Team Recruiting Report

It is December, 2017 year-end ratings have come out and now captains are working on rosters, deciding who to keep from last year, and what holes to fill and who to recruit to fill the gaps.

To aid in doing this research and recruiting, I've created a new report, a Team Recruiting Report.  It is similar to a team report, but breaks out a number of details a captain will find useful when forming a team, such as records and match ratings in singles vs doubles, and how those same two stats varied by league played in.

Here is an example:

Name	Level	W	L	Rating	Start	Courts	Singles	Doubles	18+	40+	55+
P1	4.5C/4.0C	9	10	4.05	3.65	1D-8 2D-3 3D-3		9-10 / 3.82	2-3 / 3.62	7-4 / 3.86
P2	4.5C/4.0C	12	2	4.02	3.8	1D-5 1S-2 2D-1 2S-5	7-1 / 3.97	5-1 / 4.09	6-2 / 4.05	6-0 / 3.98
P3	4.0C/4.0C	9	8	3.91	3.9	1D-2 1S-7 2D-2 3D-1	2-5 / 3.93	7-3 / 3.95	0-1 /	9-7 / 3.94
P4	4.0C/4.0C	11	3	3.85	3.84	1S-8 2S-3	11-3 / 3.98		4-2 / 3.98	7-1 / 3.98
P5	4.0C/4.0C	3	1	3.8	3.8	1D-3 2D-1		3-1 / 3.8		3-1 / 3.8
P6	4.0C/4.0C	6	4	3.79	3.83	1D-1 2D-1 3D-4		6-4 / 3.74		2-0 / 3.82	1-1 / 3.63
P7	4.0C/4.0C	9	9	3.75	3.92	1D-2 1S-3 2D-5 2S-5 3D-1	3-6 / 3.89	6-3 / 3.92	2-4 / 3.78	7-5 / 3.95
P8	4.0C/4.0C	5	6	3.75	3.73	1D-3 2D-1 3D-6		5-6 / 3.69	3-4 / 3.73	2-2 / 3.61
P9	4.0C/4.0C	5	7	3.74	3.75	1D-5 2D-2 3D-2		5-7 / 3.71	2-4 / 3.82	3-3 / 3.63
P10	4.0C/4.0C	9	8	3.73	3.7	1D-3 1S-1 2D-4 3D-3	1-1 / 3.59	8-7 / 3.79	5-4 / 3.87	4-4 / 3.7
P11	4.0C/4.0C	7	9	3.72	3.63	1D-7 2D-1 3D-5		7-9 / 3.71	2-2 / 3.79	1-5 / 3.63	4-2 / 3.78
P12	4.0C/4.0C	3	2	3.69	3.7	1D-2 2D-1		3-2 / 3.69		3-2 / 3.69
P13	4.0C/4.0C	1	1	3.67	3.67	2D-2		1-1 / 3.77		1-1 / 3.77
P14	4.0C/4.0C	9	9	3.63	3.67	1D-9 2D-3 3D-1	0-1 /	9-8 / 3.71	2-5 / 3.76	4-3 / 3.67	3-1 / 3.7
P15	4.0C/4.0C	7	4	3.6	3.71	1S-2 2D-1 2S-4 3D-4	4-2 / 3.77	3-2 / 3.64	3-2 / 3.67	4-2 / 3.75
Total		105	83

This gives a nice summary of an entire team or list of players so you can see who your singles players are, and if someone's rating is being buoyed or hurt by doing well or poorly in a particular league.

This report also includes the partner report showing how many times each player played with another candidate/rostered player and how they did together.

If you are interested in a recruiting report, contact me at ratings@teravation.net.  Since this is a new report, I'd love to get feedback and will be discounting the price for a few weeks while I iron out any issues and tailor it to what folks are looking for.

2017 USTA League Year-End Rating Analysis - 5.0 Bump Up/Down Percentages - Interesting Tennis League Stats

I already wrote about the 2017 year-end bump up/down percentages and also by gender, and started looking at levels with the 4.0 men and women, 3.5 men and women, 4.5 men and women, 3.0 men and women, and now the 5.0 men and women.

First, the 5.0 women by section.

As you might imagine, at the 5.0 level very few players are bumped up, and indeed just a few sections had a noticeable number bumped up and even those were in the los single digit percentages.  There were a lot of bump downs though, over 15% in most sections and well over 50% in Hawaii.

And then the 5.0 men by section.

The stats for the men are similar to the women, but not as extreme.  As many as 4% were bumped up and more sections had noticeable bump ups, and Hawaiian men only had about 33% bumped down and some other sections below 15%.

What do you think?  What does this mean for 5.0 play in your section in 2018?

USTA NTRP National Championships - Another opportunity for recreational tennis Nationals!

Anyone who reads my blog or follows USTA League tennis is aware of the National Championships that the USTA holds each Fall where players who played USTA League locally are able to advance through local playoffs, Districts/States, Sectionals, and make it to Nationals where they can compete against teams from 16 other sections to win a championship.  Championships are held at NTRP levels for both Adult (men's teams and women's teams) and Mixed teams.

But the USTA doesn't run just USTA League.  There are tournaments held throughout the year that are sanctioned by the USTA and these include both NTRP tournaments and as well as Open/Senior tournaments that are open to all of any age (Open) or of a minimum age (35+, 40+, 45+, etc.).

For the Open/Senior tournaments, there are select tournaments identified as championships that draw the very best in pursuit of winning the title.

What has been missing, until now, is the identification of a "champion" for NTRP tournament play.  Recently, the USTA has introduced the NTRP National Championships which is a "new national adult tournament that leverages the NTRP rating system as a way to create level-based competition at the 18 & over and 50 & over age groups".

The tournaments will be held for 18+ in Surprise, AZ April 6-8 and for 50+ in Naples, FL April 20-22 and include play at the 3.5, 4.0, and 4.5 levels in both singles and doubles.  The page says they there will be four-player round robins feeding into compass draws so each player/pair should get a number of matches in.

Interestingly, the scoring format is listed as Fast Four.  This has been experimented with in some events including the ATP NextGen tournament a month or so ago, and entails best-of-three set matches to four games with a tie-break at 3-3 in a set and tie-breaks the first to 5 win by one.  I like the idea of not having match tie-breaks for a third set, but am not sure about first to four sets.  But I guess if you are going to play upwards of 6 matches in three days, some sort of short format is needed.

To advance a player will need to play NTRP tournaments in their section and using criteria set by each section, quality to be a section's representative to the event.

Some sections will hold a Sectional tournament where players qualify for it based on tournament play during the year, say the top 8 or top 16 at a level advancing to Sectionals.  Others will just use the tournament rankings to determine the representatives directly.  See the link above with links to rules for various sections or contact info for each section's coordinator.

It is interesting to note that a couple sections have explicitly stated that self-rated players are not eligible to advance to Nationals.  I think this makes sense, you don't want to encourage players to self-rate too low to unfairly dominate at too low a level, especially since there are no 3-strike DQ's from NTRP tournament play.  There are some that feel that self-rated players shouldn't be eligible to go the USTA League playoffs or Nationals!

As there is often confusion about rankings vs ratings, particularly as it relates to NTRP play, a little clarification is probably a good idea.  See what I wrote several years ago for more details, but the summary is that a player generates an NTRP rating and associated year-end NTRP level from play in USTA League play (and sometimes NTRP tournament matches are included too), while a player separately accumulates points from NTRP tournament play based on how far they advance in a draw, and their ranking is just based on where the show up (rank) in the list of players with points.  So these are separate and distinct things.

In any case, this is a new opportunity for recreational players who have an NTRP rating/level to advance to a Nationals and get to play against peers from other sections.

What do you think?  Will you set new goals to play more tournaments because of the NTRP National Championship?

2017 USTA League Year-End Rating Analysis - 3.0 Bump Up/Down Percentages - Interesting Tennis League Stats

I already wrote about the 2017 year-end bump up/down percentages and also by gender, and started looking at levels with the 4.0 men and women,  and 3.5 men and women, 4.5 men and women, and now the 3.0 men and women.

First, the 3.0 women by section.

At the higher levels we looked at so far, the bumps up were far smaller, even many more bumps down at the 4.5 level.  At 3.0 it is the other way with some sections seeing nearly 20% of their 3.0s bumped up, Southern California, Southwest, and Caribbean leading the way.  And no section had even 5% bumped down.

And then the 3.0 men by section.

The ratio is huge for the men, Southern California having over 40% of 3.0s bumped up!  But Hawaii, Texas, and Southwest all had over 25% as well.

It is natural for there to be more improvement at lower levels, but some of the numbers above would seem to clearly show some players are under rated.  I'll have to look at how many of these are self-rated.

What do you think?  What does this mean for 3.0 play in your section in 2018?

2017 USTA League Year-End Rating Analysis - 4.5 Bump Up/Down Percentages - Interesting Tennis League Stats

I already wrote about the 2017 year-end bump up/down percentages and also by gender, and started looking at levels with the 4.0 men and women,  and 3.5 men and women, now the 4.5 men and women.

First, the 4.5 women by section.

We see that every section, other than Caribbean, had more players bumped down than up, and by a wide margin.  Southwest had over 15% bumped down and less than 4% bumped up.  A few sections like Missouri Valley, Pacific Northwest, Florida, and Eastern were pretty stagnant with under 7% bumped up or down.

And then the 4.5 men by section.

Here, Eastern is the one section with more bumps up than down, but just barely.  Every other section had more bumps down, many by a significant margin.  Hawaii stands out with over 17% of their 4.5s bumped down!  Look out for Hawaii at 4.0 Nationals next year!

What do you think?  What does this mean for 4.5 play in your section in 2018?

2017 USTA League Year-End Rating Analysis - 3.5 Bump Up/Down Percentages - Interesting Tennis League Stats

I already wrote about the 2017 year-end bump up/down percentages and also by gender, and started looking at levels with the 4.0 men and women, now onto the 3.5 men and women.

First, the 3.5 women by section.

Unlike the 4.0 women, every section had more players bumped up than down in this category.  Southern California had the most bumps up at nearly 10% while Northern had the most bumps down at about 5.5%.  But no section had less than 2.5% bumped down so there was movement both ways.

And then the 3.5 men by section.

Every section had more bumps up than down by a pretty wide margin.  Southern Cal and Texas both had over 12% of 3.5 men bumped up but no section had less than 7% bumped up.  And bump downs were rare, no section even having 4% bumped down.

What do you think?  What does this mean for 3.5 play in your section in 2018?

2017 USTA League Year-End Rating Analysis - 4.0 Bump Up/Down Percentages - Interesting Tennis League Stats

I already wrote about the 2017 year-end bump up/down percentages and also by gender, now it is time start looking at individual levels.

The first I'll take a look at is the 4.0 level.

First, the 4.0 women by section.

There is quite a bit of variation here with more sections having more bumps down than up.  Midwest had the highest percentage of bumps down followed by Southern, Missouri Valley, and Northern California.

And while most sections had more bumps down, a few went the other way and had more bumps up.  Eastern had over 6% bumped up vs less than 5% bumped down.  Northern, Pacific Northwest, and Southern California also had more bumps up than down.

And then the 4.0 men by section.

While the Southern California women were bumped down more than up, the men led the way with over 9% bumped up.  Caribbean, Florida, and Middle States were also all right around 8%.

A few sections had more bumps down than up for the men led by Hawaii but including Pacific Northwest, Southern, and Southwest.

What do you think?  What does this mean for 4.0 play in your section in 2018?

12/4 Note: Corrected discussion under the women's chart, the chart stayed the same

2017 USTA League Year-End Rating Analysis - Gender and Section Bump Up/Down Percentages - Interesting Tennis League Stats

In the second of my posts on 2017 USTA League year-end rating analysis, I'll split out the bump up/down percentages by gender and section.

As a reminder, I wrote yesterday that the overall percentages were 8.6% up and 4.6% down.

By gender, for the women, 9.1% were bumped up and 4.7% down.  The men found 7.6% up and 4.5% down.

Here then is how each of those breaks out by section.

First, the women.

The sections with the most bumps up were Caribbean and Pacific Northwest with Texas, Southern California, Southwest, and Southern also all over 9%.

And then the men.

Here, Southern California, Caribbean, and Texas were the only sections with more than 9% being bumped up.

More to come!

2017 USTA League Year-End Rating Analysis - Bump Up/Down Percentages - Interesting Tennis League Stats

With the 2017 USTA League year-end ratings having been published about 24 hours ago, I'll be doing a sequence of blog entries analyzing what happened this time around.

To start, lets look at the high level bump up/down percentages.

Across all players that had a C rating at the end of 2016 and 2017, 8.6% were bumped up and 4.6% were bumped down.  This means that 86.8% stayed the same.

That isn't a whole lot of bumps either way, and is pretty close to last year and 2015 as well.  So it doesn't appear, nationally at least, that there was much of a shake-up.

Breaking it out by section, we see the following.

There aren't a lot of sections wildly out of whack with the national average.  Caribbean had the highest percentage bumped up, just under 11%, and Hawaii had the fewest right around 7%.  Northern California had a perhaps surprisingly high number of bump downs at around 5% and New England had the fewest under 4%.

Stay tuned, I'll be breaking things out by gender and level soon.

What? No way? How? Curious why your 2017 year-end NTRP level is what it is?

The 2017 USTA League year-end NTRP ratings are out, and many players received the year-end rating they were expecting.  But some individuals may still be surprised with where they ended up.

There are always some surprises for players.  Some may have been expecting to stay where they were but got bumped up or down, while others may have won a lot and were expected a bump up, or lost a lot and thought they'd be bumped down, and neither happened.

I will be doing some analysis to look at what happened and if there were any surprises or adjustments made by the USTA and reporting a variety of stats, but for those that want to understand why they were/weren't bumped up/down, they can always get an Estimated Dynamic NTRP Rating Report that will help explain how it all works.  While my ratings aren't perfect, they usually can explain odd bumps or lack thereof.  Contact me for more information.

USTA League 2017 Year-End Ratings Are Out (sort of)

2017 year-end ratings/levels are out!  Well sort of.

The USTA had a timer saying 12:00 AM EST was D-day, and at that time the banner on TennisLink changed to "Available", but checking ratings revealed few if any that were updated.  And about 12:20 AM EST the banner changed to a new timer set to expire at 2:00 AM.  And then a few minutes later it changed to a banner set to expire at 4:00 AM!

But, if you check, more and more are now updated, so I suspect they changed the timer to try to keep everyone from checking at the same time.

Why this is always such a mess every year, I don't know.  And given they had a timer, one thought they'd get it right for once, but alas they didn't.  But presumably by morning everyone's rating will be updated.

Today is the day for 2017 year-end ratings! (Sort of)

If the countdown timer on TennisLink and what I and others have been told by USTA staff is to be believed, year-end NTRP levels for 2017 are to be published later today.  Well, technically the date seems to be 12/1 but doing the math on the TennisLink timer puts the actual time as 12:00:00 AM EST on 12/1 which is later today for the majority of the country, and just a second into 12/1 for the rest.

So we will all finally find out for sure if we are staying, bumped up, or bumped down, and we hope that TennisLink doesn't crash under the load of everything checking!  And if you don't see what you want, you may be eligible to hit the "Appeal" button to try to move up or down a level through the automated appeal process.

Many players and captains have been anxious awaiting year-end levels so they can form teams for 2018 as this is really the whole purpose of the year-end ratings.  The anxiousness is for a number of reasons.

First, some areas start leagues right away in January and team forms and/or minimum rosters are needed in less than a week and that isn't much time if player's ratings have changed unexpectedly.

Second, some areas have early start leagues where players registered based on their 2017 year-end level but rules of the section may preclude players that get bumped up from playing at their rostered level immediately, within a few weeks, or at least not advancing to playoffs.  This can disrupt teams significantly and they may want to try to add players that will be eligible.

In any case in just (hopefully) 14 hours(as I write this, we will all know!

As always, for those that want more detail than just a year-end level, I can still generate Estimated Dynamic NTRP Rating reports!  Contact me for details.