What if Novak Djokovic were to get an Estimated Dynamic NTRP Rating Report?

I am now calculating what  Estimated Dynamic NTRP rating ATP and WTA pros would have if the algorithm was used on their matches.  After seeing the top-20 lists for the men and women, the natural next question is what would an Estimated Dynamic NTRP Rating Report look for a pro?

To start, here is what Novak Djokovic's would be for 2015.

Estimated Dynamic Rating: 7.07
Match Record: 83-6
Best Match Result: 7.27 on 8/31/15
Worst Match Result: 6.66 on 3/12/15
Highest Estimated Dynamic Rating: 7.12 on 6/29/15
Lowest Estimated Dynamic Rating: 6.74 on 3/12/15

In the chart, the matches at the Grand Slams have a G on the match rating and Masters tournaments have an M.  You can click on the image to see a larger version.

Novak's rating actually moved up and down a fair amount during the year.  He started the year at 7.06 coming off his win at the 2014 Tour Finals and he was still around 7.0 after winning the Aussie Open, but it dropped reached a low point after his close wins over Ramos and Isner at Indian Wells, which followed the loss to Federer in Dubai and a closer than expected Davis Cup win.

His rating went back up after winning Indian Wells and Miami, then went up to 7.07 in getting to the final of the French Open and then was still at 7.01 after winning Wimbledon.  He dropped some in playing Canada and Cincinnati, then had his highest match rating of the year in beating Cilic at the US Open.

The Fall season found him staying right around 7.0 until the semi and final at the Tour Finals got him over 7.0 again.

Clearly, an 83-6 record and 89 matches played is not similar to most USTA League players, but having some up and down matches is pretty common, especially those that play a lot of matches.  A range of 0.38 from low to high dynamic rating is more than most have, but most don't play this many matches either.

What do you think?

Attribution: Match data is courtesy Jeff Sackmann / Tennis Abstract.

Estimated Dynamic NTRP Ratings for the WTA - How much higher rated is Sharapova than you?

I wrote yesterday about how the players on the ATP tour would be rated if the USTA's NTRP algorithm were to be used to calculate dynamic ratings from their matches.  Today, it is time to take a first look at the WTA players.

All the same caveats I mentioned before apply again.  And again, I scaled things so that the top-400 players would be considered 6.5 or higher.

So here are the WTA top-20 through the end of 2015.

Rank	Name	Rating
1	Maria Sharapova	6.96
2	Garbine Muguruza	6.89
3	Serena Williams	6.87
4	Petra Kvitova	6.82
5	Simona Halep	6.79
6	Karolina Pliskova	6.77
7	Madison Keys	6.74
8	Karin Knapp	6.70
9	Caroline Garcia	6.67
10	Sabine Lisicki	6.63
11	Mirjana Lucic	6.62
12	Shuai Peng	6.60
13	Olga Govortsova	6.60
14	Louisa Chirico	6.59
15	Mona Barthel	6.58
16	Lesia Tsurenko	6.58
17	Denisa Allertova	6.57
18	Flavia Pennetta	6.57
19	Martina Hingis	6.54
20	Lucie Safarova	6.53

Unlike the men where Djokovic was #1, Serena is not #1 but is instead #3 behind Sharapova and Muguruza.  This is because Serena had several closer than expected wins at the US Open and then the loss to Vinci, plus she didn't play the rest of the year while the others did play more and so had a chance to improve their ratings and not lose to Serena.  It will be interesting to see how this changes when I include the Australian Open.

The women are quite a bit closer grouped at the top than the men, although there is nearly a 0.5 drop from #1 to #20 which is similar to the men.

Stay tuned for more.

Attribution: Match data is courtesy Jeff Sackmann / Tennis Abstract.

Estimated Dynamic NTRP Ratings for the ATP - How much higher rated is Novak than you?

I've toyed with calculating my Estimated Dynamic NTRP Ratings for professional tennis in the past, calculating ratings for just the 2014 men and women at the Australian Open a few years ago.  But my roots in calculating ratings for professional tennis go back to my teen years when I was calculating ratings for players from just their play at the Grand Slams.  But I digress.

More to the present, I am now calculating what ATP player's dynamic NTRP ratings would be from their play in ATP (main draw and qualies), Challenger, and Futures events going back a number of years.  Given the differences between league play and tournament play at the professional level, I would not say these ratings are perfect by any stretch, but they are interesting to look at.

The ratings below are a little preliminary, I'm still fine tuning things, but wanted to share some initial data right away for people to see and comment on.

Before we look at some ratings, a few caveats.

First, these ratings are just from singles results, no doubles matches are included.

Second, the relative difference between players listed is correct/accurate, but since this set of data is not connected to league players, the difference between ratings I calculate from league play and these is a guess.  What I did was to try to ensure that the top-400 or so were considered 6.5 or higher since the USTA guidelines state a 6.5 or 7.0 is considered world-class.

Third, the dynamic NTRP algorithm is very biased towards your most recent results.  So a high rated player that has had a couple unexpected losses due to injury, playing their worst surface, etc. may have a lower rating than you'd expect.  Similarly someone who has pulled one of those upsets or is playing on their best surface may be rated higher than expected.

Fourth, these ratings include results through the end of 2015, but do not include the Australian Open or other January tournaments.

With that said, on to the ratings!  Here are the current top-20.

Rank	Name	Rating
1	Novak Djokovic	7.07
2	Roger Federer	6.94
3	Rafael Nadal	6.85
4	Andy Murray	6.78
5	Stanislas Wawrinka	6.71
6	Tomas Berdych	6.70
7	David Ferrer	6.69
8	Marcos Baghdatis	6.68
9	Kei Nishikori	6.66
10	Marin Cilic	6.64
11	Hyeon Chung	6.63
12	Steve Johnson	6.63
13	Joao Sousa	6.62
14	John Isner	6.61
15	Richard Gasquet	6.60
16	Jack Sock	6.60
17	Milos Raonic	6.60
18	Gilles Simon	6.59
19	Roberto Bautista Agut	6.59
20	Jo Wilfried Tsonga	6.58

No surprise who is rated the highest, and Novak is #1 is by a pretty healthy margin of 0.13 based in part to Novak's win in the final at the Tour finals.  Federer and Nadal are next on the strength of their Tour Finals final/semi, but there is a 0.09 gap between them, another 0.07 to Murray, and 0.07 again to Wawrinka.  After that it does get a lot closer.

It is surising to see Baghdatis and Chung so high, but Chung did have some good results to end 2015 winning a Challenger and making the quarters at Shenzhen playing Cilic close, and while not included in the above he beat Groth in straights and played Cilic very close again in Brisbane before a respectable, albeit straight sets, loss to Novak at the Aussie Open.  Baghdatis had a run to the semis in Stockholm to end his 2015.

By the scale set by the USTA, Novak would actually be a "7.5" while the rest shown would be 7.0s.  Again, this is somewhat arbitrary given where I starting things out.  But the gap between players is representative of the algorithm and you see there is nearly a full level (0.5) between #1 and #20 which I would not have expected.  There is just 0.13 between #5 and #20 though which shows the separation of the top-4 from those behind.

It will be interesting to see how these change after the Australian Open and other January events are incorporated.  Because of the third caveat above, players can move up or down a fair amount with a few better or worse than expected results, see Baghdatis and Chung above.

Stay tuned for more.

Attribution: Match data is courtesy Jeff Sackmann / Tennis Abstract.

Important PNW Seattle USTA League Dates

For those that play USTA League in the Seattle area of the Pacific Northwest, here are some of the important dates to be aware of.

As I just wrote about, the 18 & over league started a couple weeks ago and is going full bore already.  The regular season for the weekend flights is scheduled to run from 1/8 to 4/10 while the weekday flights run from 3/21 to 6/3.  Local playoffs for all teams will be 6/9-6/12.

The 40 & over league gets started a bit later, it runs from 2/19 to 5/22 and does not have separate weekend and weekday flight schedules.  Local playoffs for 40+ will be 6/3-6/5.

Sectionals for both 18+ and 40+ in PNW will again be held in Spokane this year.  18+ happens first from 8/12-8/14 and 40+ two weeks later on 8/26-8/28.

2016 USTA Leagues have started in the PNW/Seattle, some teams with 4 matches already!

In the Seattle area, January means the start of the 18 & over Adult league with the weekend flights all beginning play as early as the 8th.  The weekday flights start a bit later.

Usually each team will play 8-9 matches in their regular season and do this over the course of 3 months or so meaning a few weeks off.  But this year, some teams have already played 4 matches through just 3 weekends, and some are going to be all done with their regular season by the first weekend in March!  With local playoffs not being held until June, that is going to be quite a layoff.

What this means is it is never too early to start getting Estimated Dynamic NTRP Rating Reports.  Whether you want to see what your own rating is doing, get a team report for your own team or another to scout them, or get a flight report to see where all the teams stack up in a flight, contact me to request one or for more information.

Seattle area 2016 USTA League 18 & over play starts this weekend

It is just the second weekend of 2016 and USTA League play in the 18 & over division starts tonight in the Northwest Washington district (Seattle area) of the Pacific Northwest section.

The start of the year is always exciting as new teams have been formed and many have high aspirations so that first match is a good gauge of where the team stands.  A win gets a team off to a great start, but a loss is not the end of the world.  I can attest to being on a team that lost our first match but still made local playoffs.

A number of local teams have gotten preview reports for their sub-flights to see how all the teams stack up.  These reports now include several things.

First is a table showing the average Estimated Dynamic NTRP Rating for the entire roster as well as the average by level should there be players playing up or the flight be a plus flight.  This lets you see how the teams compare top to bottom.

Second is a table showing the average for just the top-8 rated players on the team.  This shows the strength of the theoretical best line-ups if they were to be used, which gives an indication of who might be stronger in important matches when the teams play their best players.

With this information, teams can make better decisions about which matches are important and they need their best players for versus those that have a weaker opponent and some of the lower rated players can play in without jeopardizing a team win.

And last year, one of the flight reports I did locally did predict Harbor Square to win the 18+ 3.5 men locally and they did, and in fact went all the way to Nationals.  So sometimes these flight reports pan out in predicting who will win.

Contact me if interested in any reports.

Happy New Year! It is time for 2016 USTA League Tennis

Happy New Year!  To all those that read this blog regularly, thanks!  And to those that may have just come across it, welcome.

It is now officially 2016, so 2016 leagues can begin.  Wait!  In some areas 2016 leagues began way back in May of 2015 (hello Georgia), so it isn't really the start of the league year.  But in many areas, mine being one, the main 18 & over and/or 40 & over leagues do get started in January and February.

As a reminder, all advancing leagues are part of a specific championship year, but they may start and play their local league matches as part of an early start league in the prior year.  In my area for example, our 18+ Mixed and 55+ leagues are early start leagues, so those regular season and local playoffs for 2016 are already complete.

Even if your league doesn't start for a few months, teams are still forming and preparing now, and captains with their sights on making playoffs are recruiting and seeing if they can get the strongest players at their level.  If you need help recruiting with a targeted list of players/ratings or team reports, let me know.

Happy New Year, and have fun on the courts!