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!

40 & Over Mixed Nationals in Orlando in the path of hurricane Nicole

The last weekend of Nationals is this weekend with the 40 & Over Mixed events all being played, 7.0/8.0 in Arizona and 6.0/9.0 in Orlando.

Unfortunately, the latest on hurricane Nicole is that it is going to make landfall on the Atlantic side of Florida early Thursday morning and move inland and north pretty much right over Orlando.  The good news is it appears to be a quick moving storm so may be clearing out by Friday, but reports are that Orlando could get 2-4 or even 4-8 inches of rain, and the airport closed Wednesday afternoon.

The National Campus has already posted they were closed at 1pm Wednesday and will remain closed through 1pm Friday, but I don't know there is any guarantee they are ready to open and begin hosting a Nationals event right at that time.  If they are, perhaps they can still pull it off, perhaps with a short set format, but if they don't start Friday, would they try to fit it all in on Saturday and Sunday?

Of course, to have an event you need players, and most would have been arriving Wednesday and Thursday and it is sounding like no one will be arriving tomorrow so for anyone to be there and ready to play Friday had to have already arrived, or find a way to sneak in Friday morning.

In the grand scheme of things, this is just recreational tennis and pales in comparison to folks homes and belongings, and certainly lives that could be at risk from the hurricane.  But I will try to update this post or add others as I learn any more about plans for the weekend.

Update: It appears the plan is to use short sets and get all of the round-robin matches in on Saturday.  This will allow teams to make it there on Friday.  It isn't ideal, but is probably making the best of a tough situation.

The facility should be open Friday afternoon for check-in and courts available for practice with matches starting at 9am.  Most teams are expected to be there but perhaps some won't be able to make it.

Week Six of 2022 USTA League Nationals Recap

Week six of this year's USTA League Nationals is complete and here is a recap.

This weekend was just 18 & Over Mixed with the 7.0 and 9.0 levels playing in Arizona.

The 6.0 level had three 4-0 teams advance, and then three 3-1 teams tied for the last spot with SoCal getting it with a better court record to join Intermountain, Florida, and Mid-Atlantic.  Intermountain won it all beating Mid-Atlantic in the final.

The 9.0 level had just two 4-0 teams in New England and Texas, the latter winning every match 2-1, and then four-way tie at 3-1 had NorCal and Southwest advance with the best court records.  Interestingly, both one-loss teams won the semis with NorCal beating Southwest in the final.

That is it for the 18 & Over Mixed, next weekend is the last and will have all of the 40 & Over Mixed levels playing, 7.0 and 8.0 in Arizona and the 6.0 and 9.0 in Orlando.

USTA Adult League Participation 2013 thru 2022 - Participation is up! No, wait, it is down. Well, ...

I'm starting my year-end statistics and analysis a little earlier than normal this year.  I normally wait for year-end ratings, but some of the analysis isn't dependent on them, namely participation numbers.  Since my analysis uses the USTA rating year period and that just closed for 2022, I can do this analysis now.

I've done this analysis in past years, so I'm continuing the same methodology this year which is to look at unique players that played in the main Adult leagues, i.e. 18 & Over, 40 & Over, 55 & Over, and 65 & Over.

As I noted last year, trying to make sense of 2020/2021 is difficult due to how COVID disrupted league play.  I did generally treat 2020/2021 as one "year" in my analysis but did take a look at how things looked if they were treated as separate years as well.  I'll do some of the same below.

First, here is participation across all of the main Adult leagues treating 2020 and 2021 as separate years.

Participation is up over 10% over 2021!  Tennis is growing!  Well, yes, the stats show there was an increase over last year, but remember last year was still recovering from the COVID shortened 2020 that was down 23% from 2019.  This is why I had combined 2020/2021 for much of my analysis.

So how does it look with 2020/2021 combined as a single year?

Using this approach we see that participation grew in the combined 2020/2021, but has taken a healthy drop this year.  Treating 2020/2021 as one period for this analysis clearly has some flaws as one would not expect the growth in 2020/2021, if real, to have turned around into a significant decline this year.

But if 2020/2021 was representative, 2022 would have seen the largest drop in participation, both in raw numbers as well as percentage, since I've been doing this analysis.  There were about 23K fewer players participating which was a drop of nearly 9%.

Perhaps the best way to look at this is to ignore 2020/2021 and focus on the change since 2019 since that was the last non-COVID year.  2019 was pretty flat compared to 2018, but there had been a slow/steady decline since 2013.  From 276K to 258K the decline of 18K was 3K per year, or the decline of 6.5% over the six years was about 1.1% per year.  If that 1.1% had continued for three years, we'd be down another 3.3% or so, or down to about 250K.  The actual 2022 participation of 242K is down an additional 8K or 3.2%.

And just looking at 2022 compared to 2019, this year was down 16K or over 6%.

From this we could conclude that the decline we saw from 2013 thru 2019 has continued at an even higher rate, or participation has not fully recovered from COVID yet.  The truth is probably some combination of the two.

On the other hand, given 2019 was basically flat, you might make the case that the decline had stopped and participation was going to remain flat.  If that is the case, 2022 fell short of expectations by over 18K and over 6%.

Moving on to look at each age division on its own, here is the 18 & Over with 2020/2021 combined.

Here we see 2020/2021 didn't get the same bump the overall numbers did, and the drop this year was a pretty significant 9K or almost 6%.  Compared to 2019 the drop is slightly higher at almost 7% and also a greater rate of decline than previous years.

Here then is 40 & Over.

This division had shown significant growth in the fictitious combined year, but had a big drop for 2022.  It was 19K or 14% from 2020/2021, and the growth trend there was since 2013 to 2019 disappeared as 2022 was 9K or 8% down from 2019.

Last we look at 55 & Over.

This division had also been showing growth, particularly in 2019, but it had a modest decline in the combined 2020/2021 and 2022 was basically flat, both down just over 4% from 2019.

I think the message is pretty clear.  Overall, participation may still be affected by COVID, but even considering that, the decline we've seen over the past 10 years is likely continuing.

What is interesting is that the decline is not biased as much towards younger players as it was in past years.  Where 40/55 & Over leagues showed increases from 2018 to 2019 while 18 & Over declined, all declined similar amounts since 2019.

Note: These are statistics from the data I've gathered and may not exactly match the USTA's data or they may report numbers using different criteria than I am.

If the 2022 rating year is over, when will year-end NTRP ratings be published?

Based on what I've been told, the cut-off date for 2022 year-end ratings has passed and so now we await their publishing.  When will that be?

Historically the ratings are published "around December 1st", and that is what an e-mail I recently received said to expect, but the exact date varies a bit year to year, but is always sometime early/mid-week the week after Thanksgiving.

I've done a decent job of writing a blog post every year right around when the ratings come out, so here is the history so we can see if we can identify a trend.  In reverse chronological order and using PST since, well, that is where I am.

2021 - Tuesday 11/30 Around 9 pm

2019 - Sunday 12/1 around 9 pm

2018 - Wednesday 11/28 around 7 pm

2017 - Thursday 11/30 around 9 pm

2016 - Wednesday 11/30 around 7 pm

2015 - Sunday/Monday 11/29-11/30 overnight

2014 - Monday 12/1 around 9 pm

2013 - Sunday/Monday 12/1-12/2 overnight

2012 - Monday 11/26 early morning

There you have it, the date has always been by the end of day 12/1, but as early as 11/26.  In some years there was a published date or timer on TennisLink but sometimes that date was not hit and there were delays resulting in the dates above.

And the day of the week varies.  For awhile, it appears they were targeting Sunday night or Monday morning, but recently it has usually been mid-week.

If I were to hazard a guess, I would say to expect something around 9pm on either Wednesday 11/30 or Thursday 12/1.

Now we wait and see!

The 2022 Rating Year is Done!

The 2022 USTA League Nationals are not yet complete, there are still two weekends of Mixed Nationals to go, but Adult Nationals are now complete, and this year that means we are past the cut-off date and all matches that will count for year-end ratings have been played.

There has been some confusion the past couple weeks over what the date was.  I understood the date to be October 30, when the last Adult Nationals was completed, but most everyone I was hearing from was saying the were being told it would be November 13th, when the last Mixed Nationals would be finished.  I was pretty confident in 10/30 being the real cut-off but wasn't sure why the 11/13 date was being shared as the date.

This is by no means the final word, but I'd reached out to a coordinator and was initially told it was 11/13, but then was told that the cut-off date is indeed 10/30, but that there is a grace period to get matches entered and that date is 11/13.  Assuming this is the case, it is possible that 11/13 being the cut-off date for entry but the cut-off date for matches to be played was 10/30 was confusing and misunderstood and thus miscommunicated.

Also adding to the confusion is that last year the cut-off date was the last day of Mixed Nationals (11/14) and so one might logically conclude it would follow the same pattern this year.  However, to the best of my knowledge, all other recent years have followed the pattern of the last day of Adult Nationals and it appears last year was a one-time experiment with a later date, but we are back to the previous pattern.

So, I'm going with this past Sunday 10/30 as the cut-off date.  Apologies to anyone that I may have told 11/13 being the date, but I'm pretty sure I said I thought that might be wrong but what was being shared with a number of players.