2021 year-end NTRP ratings have been published!

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

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

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

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

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

2019 USTA League NTRP ratings have been published!

As I write this, it appears the year-end NTRP ratings have been published on TennisLink.  I am seeing players with ratings with a 12/31/2019 date so at least some are now available.  I think things showed up right at midnight ET, so technically on 12/2 as expected.  I just expected it later in the day on 12/2.

To check what your rating is, you can go to TennisLink and look yourself up, or login and it should show your rating.  Make sure to check the date and that it is 12/31/2019 as that is what all new ratings should show.  If it still says a different date, yours may not be updated yet, or you didn't play enough matches to get a new rating.

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

2018 NTRP ratings have been published!

As I write this, it appears the year-end NTRP ratings have been published on TennisLink.  I am seeing players with ratings with a 12/31/2018 date so at least some are now available.

To check what your rating is, you can go to TennisLink and look yourself up, or login and it should show your rating.  Make sure to check the date and that it is 12/31/2018 as that is what all new ratings should show.  If it still says a different date, yours may not be updated yet, or you didn't play enough matches to get a new rating.

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

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.

2016 USTA NTRP year-end ratings are published!

The wait is over, the USTA has published the 2016 year-end NTRP Ratings.  At least some are now showing at 2016 year-end ratings.

USTA League players may now furiously go check their rating on TennisLink and see whether they were bumped up or not and begin figuring out what team(s) they can play on.

Stay tuned for more details as I look at the ratings and do my analysis.

2015 USTA League year-end ratings are out!

USTA League 2015 year-end ratings have been or are being published on TennisLink.  I'll be taking a closer look to compare how my estimated dynamic ratings predicted year-end ratings, and also looking at stats and trends across all the sections, so stay tuned for more.

2014 USTA League year-end ratings are out - No more "B" ratings

USTA League 2014 year-end ratings have been or are being published on TennisLink.

My initial checks are that my estimates and reports are accurate for the vast majority of players, but I've missed on a few that are really baffling.

The most baffling is a 4.0 that didn't play up and went 10-2 but had two losses in playoffs that got bumped up, no surprise, but to 5.0!

I'll share more strange ones as I see them.

But one thing I should have blogged about and didn't is that while benchmark calculations are still being done, players are not going to have the "B" designation anymore.  I'm not sure why the USTA changed this, but they did and it was in a newsletter I saw a few months ago.

Year end ratings are out, how accurate are my Estimated Dynamic NTRP Ratings?

With year end ratings now being published, I took a quick look at some players to see how accurate my Estimated Dynamic NTRP Ratings are.  I plan to do a more in depth analysis later, but here is how I did on some initial checks.

I played on a 4.0 team that went to local playoffs this year and included a 3.5 playing up and several players that played up at 4.5 too.  In our early start ratings, two were bumped up to 4.5 while the rest stayed where they were and I had all of these correct, and in the year-end ratings both early start bump ups came back down as I predicted.  So 14 for 14 here.

I did reports for a 4.5+ team that went to Nationals and won it all, and as expected they had quite a few players bumped up.  I got every player on this roster correct except for one.  This included a few self-rated players as well as a 5.0 that won every match all year and did not get bumped up to 5.5.  11 for 11 here.

I just heard back from someone I did a report for that I nailed her rating too.  She was a 3.0 that I had at 2.99, just below the threshold to be bumped but close enough to appeal if I was correct.  She wasn't bumped in the year-end ratings but was able to successfully appeal.  So my 2.99 was correct or at most just a few hundredths off.

From this sample, I am 25 out of 26 correct, or 96%.  I don't know that when I do a more complete analysis I'll maintain this high percentage, but I've also gotten other feedback and checked a few others and found my ratings to be right now for most.

Stay tuned for more.

USTA 2012 year end ratings are out - How did my Estimated Dynamic NTRP do?

It turns out that despite the lack of a notice on TennisLink, year-end ratings are in fact being published today and they have even done so well in advance of the traditional 5pm.  With that, TennisLink is now enduring its peak load for the year as we all check to see if we or our prospective teammates have been bumped up/down so we can know how to assemble our teams for 2013.

I've been generating Estimated Dynamic NTRP reports for anyone interested in a preview of what their year-end rating may be and the details behind it and with a number of reports done, it is now time to compare what I estimated with what year-end ratings ended up being.

Of all the reports I did, 79% estimated the player to be at the right level.  But I consider being within 0.05 to be an acceptable margin for error considering it is just an estimate and an additional 9% or 88% total fell within this range.  Of the remaining 12%, I had 3% estimated too high and 9% estimated too low.

All those I estimated too high were self-rates that went to playoffs, so since I don't attempt to estimate the benchmark part of the calculation, I don't feel too bad about missing here.  And I did correctly estimate a self-rate being bumped down so I don't think I have a general problem with overrating self-rated players.

Of those I estimated too low, one went to playoffs (benchmark calculation likely kicked in) and one was just 0.07 from being estimated to be bumped up and also went to playoffs (benchmark calculation kicked in), so I don't feel too bad about these.

So I'll take 88% accuracy where most of the misses have explanations that I actually commented on being possible in the report I generated.

Even though ratings are out, if you want to know why your rating is where it is, I am still generating reports so contact me if you are interested.

Update 12/20: More reports have been generated and the accuracy is now at 92%.