I speculated about what the USTA might do, but that obviously hasn't happen (yet?), but the USTA does appear to be progressing with implementing it including posting an Introduction to the New ITF World Tennis Number video on YouTube.
The video includes roles by ITF President David Haggerty, USTA Community Tennis Chief Executive Craig Morris, and USTA Recreational Tennis Managing Director Tracy Davies, and states the WTN is the "international tennis rating system like nothing seen before". They also state it will help "you to find similarly matched players anywhere" and be the "largest free online tennis community" in the world.
In the "few key things for players to know", they list:
- For juniors, the WTN will not affect USTA rankings, but will be used for more accurate entry and seeding in events.
- There will be education for parents and coaches so they can better understand WTN and how to support their juniors.
There was no mention of adults, and no mention of leagues. For now at least it all seems focused purely on juniors and their tournaments, although the video does mention "any age and level" and include shots of non-juniors playing.
At the end, there is a pointer to usta.com/worldtennisnumber where it highlights some details about WTN, all that I've written on before, but a quick summary is:
- The scale is 40 to 1, 40 being a beginner and 1 being an elite pro.
- Data (and presumably WTNs) are updated weekly.
- Separate WTN for singles and doubles.
- Used as seeding criteria for some USTA and ITF junior tournaments in 2022.
This supports WTN being used just for juniors, which is consistent with what I've heard the past 6 months or so.
There is also an FAQ on the page linked to above, a few key points from that being:
- You get a WTN as a result of playing in USTA and ITF events.
- WTN will use results provided by the USTA and go back as far as 2016.
- The algorithm will give more weight to more recent matches.
- WTNs will be published each week around 3:00 AM EST.
- "The USTA has no plans to replace NTRP. The NTRP rating system will continue to serve as the foundation of the USTA Adult League program."
I quoted this last bullet as I didn't want to misrepresent anything on that statement, but it seems to say NTRP is not going away. Plans can change of course, so take that statement for what it is worth, but there it is.
The FAQ also states that WTNs can be viewed by logging in to your account on usta.com and looking at your or other player's profiles. Well, if I look at mine, there is no WTN yet. Of course, usta.com shows none of my results that are on TennisLink, so they perhaps still have an integration problem on their hands between TennisLink and Serve Tennis. But this really shouldn't be an issue if they are just reporting results to the ITF and the ITF is doing the calculations. It would just seem to be that they aren't showing WTNs on profiles yet, at least adult players that play only league matches.
Note that this lack of WTNs on profiles isn't reserved to adults. I found a junior who has played in tournaments this year, and there is no sign of a WTN on their profile. So despite the video stating WTNs will show up on profiles, I'm not seeing it.
Are you looking forward to WTNs being published?
