Week two of WTN for USTA players

It has been a week since the USTA began publishing WTN ratings for players, and right on schedule it appears the weekly update is being pushed out.  Kudos to the USTA and ITF for sticking to the schedule as advertised.

I've only been able to do some anecdotal analysis of the new ratings so far, more details to hopefully come soon, but I've noticed a few things.

• WTN ratings can change without a player playing additional matches
• Correspondingly Game zONe and confidence levels can also change without a player playing additional matches
• For these players, changes I've seen are generally in the single-digit hundredths, but there are some with larger changes, the highest I've seen is 0.7.

It is entirely possible that while a player did not play more matches, something was reported late to the USTA or ITF and so the algorithm sees it as an additional match and that is why a rating changed.  However, I suspect instead there is some factor in the algorithm that gives more weight to recent results, or has results in the past fall outside the window being considered, or there is an iterative/retroactive aspect to the algorithm and while a player didn't play, someone they played in the past did play and that affected their rating.

If you want to see all the analysis I've done on WTN recently, click here and scroll through the list of posts.