It is 2023 and never too early to get an Estimated Dynamic NTRP Rating Report and track your rating!

It is 2023, and in some areas leagues have started or are starting in the next few weeks.  Some areas even had matches in November and December after the ratings cut-off date.  So there are a growing number of matches being played that will go towards 2023 year-end ratings.

That means player's ratings are changing as they play and those that like to track their rating may want to get an Estimated Dynamic NTRP Rating Report from me.  Yes, I continue to calculate my ratings and do reports using them!

Now, I do offer a variety of reports from individual reports with a host of detailed stats and a chart showing how my rating for a player has changed match to match, to team reports showing ratings for a whole roster and summary stats on each player and how they've done with different partners, to flight reports show averages for each team in a flight which is a great way to scout opponents.  I can also do custom reports or lists for captains wanting to find or recruit players.

If you are interested in a report, contact me!

Analyzing 2022 USTA NTRP year-end ratings - How often do appeals stick? How many are inappropriate?

I just wrote about 2022 year-end ratings and how many players have already appealed their rating, but a natural follow up question is how many of these appeals are really appropriate?

Allowing appeals is seemingly done for a few reasons:

• Players get bumped up but want to continue to play their their old team and friends
• Players get bumped up and there is no flight at the higher level and appealing down allows them to play
• Players are improving but just missed a bump up and want the validation of the higher rating by their name
• A team at the higher level needs players but roster limits require a minimum number of at-level players so if someone appeals up, they help meet that minimum number

One can debate which of the above, or other reasons there might be, are legitimate reasons to appeal, but one could also make the case that if someone appeals and then goes back to their old rating after a year, perhaps that appeal wasn't appropriate or justified.

Whether you agree with the characterization of this scenario indicating an inappropriate or unjustified appeal, it is a statistic we can look at so I went above doing so.  What I'll be doing is looking at players that appealed in year X but in year X+1 went back to their old level.

I will note that my data is not necessarily 100% perfect, but I think it is good enough for us to get a good idea of what happens with players that appeal.

First, looking at players that appealed their year-end level up:

• 2021 - 1,948 appeals up with 645, or 33%, bumped back down at 2022 year-end
• 2019 - 2,443 / 729 / 30%
• 2018 - 2,018 / 630 / 31%
• 2017 - 1,765 / 552 / 31%
• 2016 - 1,866 / 574 / 31%

This shows a pretty clear trend of around a third of appeal ups being "inappropriate".

What about appeal downs?  Here that is:

• 2021 - 3,307 appeals down with 1,060, or 32%, bumped back up at 2022 year-end
• 2019 - 4,706 / 1,544 / 33%
• 2018 - 3,123 / 1,400 / 45%
• 2017 - 2,151 / 834 / 39%
• 2016 - 2,122 / 834 / 39%

Here we see a higher percentage, but not quite as consistent year to year, of appeal downs being "inappropriate".

What do you think?  Do these stats tell us anything about whether the appeal system is working as intended?  Is it a concern that 30-40% of appeal players go back to their pre-appeal level?

Analyzing 2022 USTA NTRP year-end ratings - Who appeals and in what direction?

Next up in our analysis of 2022 USTA NTRP year-end ratings, we take a look at appeals.

We aren't even a week post ratings release, and not everyone that is going to try to appeal has done so so these stats could change, but many that want to appeal will do it right away so I think it is still worthwhile to take a look now.

First, my analysis shows that 2,633 player have successfully appealed, 1,476 of them down and 1,157 up.  For comparison, for 2021, 4,107 appealed down and 2,335 appealed up.

Where it gets more interesting is when splitting it out by gender.  Of the 1,476 appeals down, 632 of them were women and 844 were men.  That is a similar ratio to 2021, perhaps a bit more heavy towards men.  But for appeals up, it switches and women do it more with 953 women and just 204 men.  Again, this is a similar ratio to 2021.

So more women appeal up than down, and a lot more men appeal down than up.

But part of this may have to do with the levels players are at.  It is generally the case that lower rated players are more likely to appeal up and higher rated ones are more likely to appeal down.

Here are the appeals down and up for women using the appealed from level.

• 2.5 - 0 / 670
• 3.0 - 191 / 753
• 3.5 - 449 / 390
• 4.0 - 622 / 52
• 4.5 - 411 / 2
• 5.0 - 165 / 0
• 5.5 - 18 / 0

And the men.

• 2.5 - 0 / 71
• 3.0 - 46 / 188
• 3.5 - 473 / 148
• 4.0 - 835 / 54
• 4.5 - 626 / 7
• 5.0 - 254 / 0
• 5.5 - 17 / 0

We see that a lot of 2.5 and 3.0 women appeal up, and interestingly more 3.5s appeal down to 3.0 than up to 4.0.  At 4.0 and above there are very few appeals up and the majority are down.

The men also have more appeals up at 2.5 and 3.0 and that swaps at 3.5 and by a much larger ratio than the women with 3x appealing down vs the women vs just 15% more for the women.

What do you think?

Analyzing 2022 USTA NTRP year-end ratings - Bump rates by level and gender

Continuing on with my analysis of 2022 USTA NTRP year-end ratings, I take a look at bumps rates by level, both overall and by gender.

Here are the overall bump rates by level.

We can see 2.5s are only bumped up and not down, nearly 13% of 3.0s are bumped up vs under 4% being bumped down, 3.5s are close to even, and then at 4.0 and above there are more bump downs than up.

Let's see how it is by gender as well.  The women:

Not a whole lot different from the overall, just fewer bump ups once you get to 3.5 and above.

And here are the men:

As you'd expect, just a slight difference with more bump ups at most every level.

Stay tuned for more.

Analyzing 2022 USTA NTRP year-end ratings - Section bump rates by gender

The USTA published 2022 year-end NTRP ratings last week so that means it is time to start doing some analysis to see what we can learn.

To start, we'll look at bump rates overall and by section including by gender.  In all the charts below, it is showing the percentage of players bumped down (purple) or up (green).

First, the overall rates were:

• Stayed - 86.1%
• Bumped up - 8.3%
• Bumped down - 5.6%

This is very consistent with most years.  For the women:

• Stayed - 85.7%
• Bumped up - 8.7%
• Bumped down - 5.6%

And then men:

• Stayed - 86.9%
• Bumped up - 7.6%
• Bumped down - 5.5%

Not a lot of variation, the men are bumped up slightly less than the women, the bump down percentages are about the same.

Here are the overall bump rates by section.

Unlike many years in the past where some sections have significantly higher bump up rates, we see that the bump rates are remarkably similar across the sections.  Just Hawaii, with slightly more bump downs than bump ups, and Northern, with just slightly more bump ups than down, don't fit the profile of most of the other sections where bump ups were about 50% higher than bump downs.

Taking a look at the same stats but by gender, here are the women.

Nothing is remarkably different here.  Just Hawaii and Northern are about equal bump up/down rates, and with a little variation the rest have about 50% more bumps up than down.

And the men.

Here we see a few sections with more than 50% greater bumps up than down like Eastern and perhaps Florida.  Southwest is also close to near equal and Hawaii has a lot more bumps down than up and Missouri Valley is near equal.

Stay tuned for more.

2022 year-end NTRP ratings have been published!

It has been much anticipated, and has finally happened, the USTA has published year-end ratings for 2022!  As I write this, there are at least some players with 2022 year-end ratings on TennisLink.

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 12/31/2022 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!

Week Seven of 2022 USTA League Nationals Recap

Week seven, the final week, of 2022 USTA League Nationals is complete, here is a recap.

This weekend was just 40 & Over Mixed with two levels played in Arizona and two in Orlando.  The Orlando even had a day washed out by hurricane Nicole but they went to a short set format on Saturday and got all the matches in, although I think a few teams didn't make it.

The 6.0 level in Orlando had the PNW team missing, but the other teams played with a five-way tie at 3-1 with Middle States, Eastern, MOValley, and Southwest advancing having the better court records.  Southwest and Eastern won the semis to make the final where Eastern won 3-0.

The 7.0 level was in Arizona and after Eastern and Hawaii went 4-0, there was a big tie with six teams at 3-1, but NorCal and SoCal stood out with the best court records and took the spots.  Eastern and NorCal played in the final where NorCal won 2-1.

The 8.0 level was also in Arizona and a nice and tidy four teams went 4-0.  Middle States beat PNW 2-1 while Intermountain did the same with SoCal, and then PNW won the final 2-1.

Last, the 9.0 level in Orlando had Southern and Eastern go 4-0, and then a three-way tie at 3-1 saw PNW and Florida advance with the better court records.  Eastern and Florida advanced with 2-1 wins before Florida won the final 2-1.

That is a wrap for 2022 Nationals!  Well, there are some what they call "Invitationals" to be played in the Spring with the 65 & Over and Tri-Level Invitationals, but at this point, the next big thing is ratings which should be published the week after Thanksgiving, I'm guessing on 11/30.

Congratulations to the new 2022 Nationals Champs!