The Great Southern Bump of 2019 - USTA Southern men get historic bump up rates

I've been going through my post-NTRP ratings published analysis and what was a little smoke when looking at bump up/down rates at a high level has turned into a raging fire as I've drilled in.

Here is a summary of what I've posted so far regarding bump up rates of players that had a C rating at the end of 2018 and 2019.

• 2.5 men - Southern had 75% bumped up, nationally 52%
• 3.0 men - Southern had 33.1% bumped up, nationally 21.8%
• 3.5 men - Southern had 18.2% bumped up, nationally 11.2%
• 4.0 men - Southern had 17.8% bumped up, nationally 10.9%
• 4.5 men - Southern had 19.8% bumped up, nationally 6.7%
• 5.0 men - Southern had 6.3% bumped up, nationally 1.5%

The Southern men had the highest bump up percentage among all the sections at every level!  And it was significantly above the national average, usually 60+% greater, but about 3 times greater for 4.5s and 4 times for 5.0s.  It is pretty much unheard of for there to be nearly 20% of 4.5s bumped up and anywhere close to 6% of 5.0s.

That begs the question, what has this done to the distribution of players across the levels?  Let's look again at the distribution nationally for the men.

In this chart, it shows stats for both 2018 and 2019 to easily see the change year to year, and the length of the bar is the number of players at that level, while the label at the end of the bar is the percentage of players at that level that year.

We see a "normal" distribution, the center being just about right between 3.5s and 4.0s.  And compared to 2018, not a dramatic change, the percent being 3.5 dropped slightly, 4.0s down half a percentage point, and the 4.5s up just over 2 points, with 5.0s up half a point.

Now, the distribution in Southern.

This is somewhat different in that the center of the "normal" curve is closer to 3.5 than 4.0.  We see that it has changed quite a bit though and moves closer to the mid-point between them with the 2.5 percent dropping 1 point, 3.0 percent dropping over 4 points, 3.5 dropping 0.4, 4.0 going up nearly a point, 4.5 going up a whopping 3.2 points, and 5.0 going up nearly 2 points.

Or put another way, it appears 2.5s moved to 3.0, more 3.0s moved to 3.5, but even with the influx of 3.5s the number went down slightly as just as many 3.5s moved to 4.0.  The number of 4.0s did grow, but there were still a lot that moved up to 4.5, and quite a few 4.5s moved to 5.0.

So there was a definite shift upwards which dovetails with the bump up percentages reported above.

One might ask the question, why was and is Southern biased more towards lower levels, and was the large number of bump ups a reaction to that to try and make the distribution closer to what it is nationally?  It could be that the USTA League playing population is older in Southern and happens to have more lower rated players, but clearly it is different than the national distribution, even after the noticeable bump ups.

However, an adjacent section, Florida, perhaps also with an older population of USTA League players, is actually biased slightly towards the higher rated players already.  Here is Florida's distribution chart.

Florida had some movement from 3.5 to 4.0 and 4.0 to 4.5, but already had more 4.0s than 3.5s, and more 4.5s than 3.0s unlike Southern.

So it would seem someone decided that Southern players were generally underrated, or at least out of whack with the national distribution, with a distribution biased too far towards 3.0 and 3.5, and steps needed to be taken to change that distribution and get more 4.0s and 4.5s.

What do you think?  Is the distribution of Southern's men being towards the lower levels an issue and was the redistribution needed and appropriate?

Note: "The Great Southern Bump of 2019" was a phrase I thought I coined, but an acquaintance had done so as well so credit goes to "OTL".