What does WTN do with professionals, and what is the Pro Zone?

The World Tennis Number (WTN) from the ITF is now being published on USTA player profiles, is advertised as a rating going from 40 for a beginner, to 1 for a pro.  But what exactly does that mean?  What are professional's WTNs?  And how can I relate a pro's WTN to your own?

First, from the various FAQs on WTN, there is the text "Pro players will be closer to 1".  This isn't explicit, but with the FAQ preceding this statement with the range being 40 to 1, one might think that the very top pro is a 1.0 and other pros would be in the 1.x or perhaps even 2.x range.

Second, in my perusal of WTNs, the smallest I've seen is 1.1, this for a male unrated (NTRP) player from Mississippi.  There are actually very few in the 1's, but the 2's has a fair number.  So if a pro is a 1, is this 1.1 on par with pros?

When I did my chart showing a hypothetical mapping from NTRP to WTN, I left a little room for pros (NTRP 7.0) to live in the 1-3 WTN range.  My guess at the mapping has been proven wrong with the ranges much larger with huge overlap, but if there is no room for the pros, what is done for them?

It turns out, the USTA at least, is not publishing WTNs for pros.  If you go lookup Jack Sock for example, you won't see a WTN showing for singles or doubles, but instead it has the meter maxed out and "Pro Zone" text in the middle of the widget.

It appears what happens is anyone that is an actual "pro", this based on having an ATP/WTA ranking, will simply be listed as a "Pro" and that appears to be what "Pro Zone" means.  This from an LTA web-site:

A world-wide rating system that ranges from 40 (recreational players) to 1 (pro players) - players with an ATP/WTA ranking will be listed as PRO

What I'm not sure of is if the matches professionals play are part of the WTN dataset or not.  You'd think they would be, in which case my guess is the WTNs could go below 1.0 and perhaps even negative.  Perhaps this is why they don't show them and instead just show "Pro Zone".

But what will happen when Jack quits playing and his ATP ranking goes away?  Shouldn't his WTN then become visible?  What will it be?

This exposes a bit of a challenge for any rating system where there are arbitrary upper and lower thresholds.  What happens if a 39.9 does so poorly that their calculated WTN goes above 40?  What happens when a player, recreational player or pro, wins so much their WTN goes below 1?  Does the whole range have to be recalibrated and everyone's WTN changes to keep the integrity of the 40 and 1 boundaries?

It appears the ITF (or USTA at least) is punting on the subject and just not showing pro's WTNs.  And beginners, at this point at least, aren't playing any matches that get into the system so we don't have to worry about that yet.

Although on this last point, I do see some NTRP 2.5s  with WTNs of 40.0, not many, but a few.  So it appears this boundary is enforced, at least from what is published.

And in another "Whacky WTN" moment, I found a male player who is a self-rated NTRP 5.5, and in singles they show as "Pro Zone", but in doubles they are a measly 22.3 which is the WTN you might see for an NTRP 3.5 or even 3.0 player!  Similarly I found a female player with no NTRP that is "Pro Zone" in singles but a WTN 17.4 in doubles.  And there are others that are Pro Zone in singles or doubles and a double digit WTN in the other.  And some of these wild differences have the high confidence blue checkmark as well.

I'm sure some of what I'm seeing are exceptions or edge cases, but I'm coming across a fair amount.  It is interesting to say the least.