More interesting USTA League stats - Which court does the winning team win most often?

Continuing on in my effort to share interesting stats from the data I collect for the Estimated Dynamic NTRP Rating reports I generate, I took a look at how often the winning team in a match wins the different courts.

Specifically, I took a look at all team matches that were 2 singles and 3 doubles.  Here is the percent of the time the winning team wins each court.

Court	Winning %
1S	72.9
2S	73.8
1D	74.9
2D	76.2
3D	75.5

It isn't a huge margin, but pretty clearly the winning team is going to win court 2 doubles more often than any other court.  And court 1 singles is won the least often.  And interestingly, all of the doubles courts are won more often than either of the singles courts.

What can we take away from this?

First, it appears that the key to winning is having good doubles teams and not singles guys.  This goes against intuition a bit (IMHO) that the easiest way to having a strong team is to have 2 lock-down singles guys and 1 great doubles team (this requires the fewest strong players to win a team match, just 4).

Second, you need depth at doubles.  Whether it is because captains flip-flop and play their best doubles team on court 2, or just because the better team is deeper and their second best doubles team is better than the opponent's, the winning team wins court 2 doubles most often and court 3 doubles next most often.

Third, and this one probably isn't a surprise, it looks like the most likely court to be thrown when juggling line-ups is court 1 singles with the winning team losing it more often than court 2 singles.  And court 1 doubles also suffers from this too.

What do you think?  What other interesting stats are you interested in seeing?  Let me know.

Early Start Leagues and USTA Nationals, are they fair?

I was contacted by a report customer today asking why her 3.0 team was going to have to play against a 3.5 at Nationals, and not just a 3.5 but one that had won a match playing up at 4.0.  The answer is, Early Start Leagues.

In this case, the player in question played in a district where the 40 & over league was an Early Start League this year.  This means that, typically for court scheduling and the like, the 2013 league started play before year-end ratings came out and so it is designated as an Early Start League (ESL).  Because the year-end ratings haven't come out yet, their year-end rating can't be used to determine the level they are eligible to play at.

What sections do to address this is to have Early Start Ratings (ESR) that come out mid-year, typically in July or August.  These ratings are a "sneak preview" into what a players year-end rating may be and are used to try to get the players in an ESL playing at the right level.  This is a good idea and usually works, but sometimes it doesn't.

In this case, the player was a 3.0 in 2012 and played up at 3.5 losing all her matches prior to the ESR date and her dynamic rating was just below 3.0, so her ESR was still 3.0 and she proceeded to begin play in the ESL on a 3.0 team.  She played one match before year-end ratings came out and it was a thumping of the opponent which caused her rating to go up and she ended up being a 3.5 in the year-end ratings.  Note that my ratings correctly had her a 3.0 ESR and also had her being bumped up at year-end.

So she is now a 3.5, but playing in a 3.0 flight.  What are the USTA's rules for this?  See page 12 at this link, but the summary is that sections have options, and it appears option 2 is employed by the section in question which allows a player to continue play in the ESL using their ESR unless their year-end rating was clearly above level.  In this case, the player had just eked over the threshold to be bumped up so she wasn't clearly above level.

So she gets to play in the 3.0 flight, but must now play as a 3.5 in the 18 & over league (not an ESL), and also decides to play up in a 4.0 18 & over flight.  She does get a win at 4.0 (4 losses too), and also loses 3 3.5 matches, so she isn't dominating, but her 3.0 team advances to Nationals.

To opposing teams then, it looks like she is a 3.5 that has won at 4.0 and gets to play against 3.0s at Nationals.  This is all per the rules so is fair in that regard, and many of the other players that will be at Nationals are also effectively 3.5s so the play may be competitive, but should the USTA allow this to happen?

Comments welcome.

More teams advance to USTA Nationals with the help of Estimated Dynamic NTRP Rating reports

USTA League Sectionals took place this past weekend in many areas and I'm pleased to say that two more teams I helped with individual and/or team Estimated Dynamic NTRP Rating reports have advanced to Nationals.  That brings the tally to four.  Thankfully, all four are at different levels or different divisions so they won't be facing each other :)

Unfortunately, one other team I was helping did not advance, losing on the sets lost tie-breaker to a team they beat.  The team I was helping, team A, went 1-1 in their first two matches, their loss being a heart breaking 3-2 loss where all the losses were in match tie-breaks, and they needed to beat the lone remaining 2-0 team in their sub-flight 4-1, or a 3-2 win with a little luck would do it too.  Unfortunately, they won 3-2 but lost a set in two of the wins so they lost more sets and lost that tie-breaker.

This isn't the first time a team has won the head-to-head but lost this tie-breaker, but perhaps it will be the last?  I'm was told that a USTA official said next year, head-to-head will be the first tie-breaker.  Too bad it wasn't this year!

Good luck teams!

More Sectionals take place this weekend

It is August, so there are Sectionals going on somewhere most every weekend.  This weekend has 18 & Over Sectionals going on in Northern California and 40 & Over Sectionals in the Pacific Northwest.  Alas, I was hoping to be playing this weekend but my team lost in our local playoffs and didn't make it to Yakima.

However, I'm still involved as I have teams that have gotten reports participating in both of these Sectionals.  Good luck to those teams!

Updated interesting USTA League Stats - Ratings by Section - Florida and Midwest added

I've written a few blog posts with interesting ratings, and below is an updated chart showing the ratings by section with Florida and the Midwest added.



Florida is similar to the Mid-Atlantic with a pretty good distribution towards the higher rated players, but is not to the same levels that Northern Cal, Southern Cal, and Texas are.  The Midwest is also very similar to Florida and Mid-Atlantic.

Enjoy!

Can a 3.5 USTA League team make it to 3.5 Nationals?

The subject may seem a bit odd, but there is a common perception that a team of players that are actually 3.5s has no chance of advancing to Nationals.  Instead a team must be filled with ringers and self-rated players that under rate themselves and manage their to avoid strikes.

To test this, I thought I'd take a look at a couple 3.5 teams headed to this year's Nationals.  The teams I'm looking at are from Houston, an area notorious for ratings manipulation shenanigans, and the Northwest Washington district that has had a strong record of sending competitive teams to Nationals.  I'll be using my Estimated Dynamic NTRP Ratings to do the analysis.

First, Houston.  This team has a big roster with 7 benchmark rated players and a whopping 14 self-rated or appeal players.  They won their local league with a 7-1 record, winning 32 of 40 courts during the year and then turned it on in local playoffs going 3-0/14-1.  At Sectionals they went 3-0/12-3 winning their flight and then 2-0/7-3 in the semis and finals.

They did have some attrition along the way with 3 of the self-rates being DQ'd, one at Sectionals.  Note that my ratings agree with 2 of them including the one at Sectionals, and perhaps the other was an administrative DQ.  Including those DQ'd players the average rating for the team is 3.51.  But even without them the average is still 3.46.  With the players still eligible for Nationals, they could run out 5 courts with players all rated 3.48 or higher.

This is certainly a strong team with 3 that have already effectively been bumped up and a number of others (not withstanding results of the Texas Fall league being used to manage ratings back down) that will follow suit at the end of the year.  One can certainly make the case that very few of these players are "real" 3.5s.

Next, Northwest Washington.  This team went 8-1/35-10 in league play, going 2-0/9-1 in local playoffs.  At Sectionals, they went 2-0/8-2 in their flight and then won the final 3-2.  Their roster includes 5 self-rates and 4 benchmark players.

None of their self-rates were DQ'd, although 2 of them I do have rated over 3.50.  Their team average rating is just 3.35, but their top-8 average is 3.49 and all are at 3.35 or above.

This team also appears strong, but perhaps not as strong as Houston, and has a number of players that will likely be bumped up at year-end.

Having said all this, you would expect teams that do well and advance to Nationals to have strong players at the top of their rating range and even above.  Players certainly improve and someone has to be bumped up, and you would expect players on teams that do well to fall into this category.

So technically, both teams are filled with 3.5s that are eligible to play.  On the surface it does appear some players, more so from the Houston team, self-rated artificially low and thus aren't really 3.5s, but from what I've presented, I can't say whether this was deliberate or innocent, but it is a shame if it is the former.

It will be interesting to see how these teams do at Nationals, and even more interesting if they happen to face each other.  Check back in a couple months and I'll take a look at how each does at Nationals!

Comparing an Estimated Dynamic NTRP Rating Report with a real USTA League DQ letter

I created some Estimated Dynamic NTRP Rating Reports for a team last week and one of their players had been three-strike disqualified so I had the opportunity to take a look at it.  This isn't new, I've done this many times and generally find that I can explain the DQ.

What was interesting about this one was that the DQ letter they forwarded to me not only identified which matches were strikes, but listed the dynamic rating for each match.  This was a huge opportunity for me to do a more detailed comparison and here is what I found.

The player in question had self-rated as a 4.0 and played 7 matches, all doubles, going 6-1.  Here are the scores, the dynamic rating in the DQ letter, and my estimated rating after each match.

Match Result	Dynamic NTRP	Estimated Dynamic NTRP
Won 7-5,0-6,1-0	3.97	4.01
Won 6-4,6-1	4.36	4.49
Won 7-5,6-1	4.23	4.22
Won 6-2,7-6	4.16	4.15
Lost 6-3,6-2	4.17	4.17
Won 6-2,4-6,1-0	4.19	4.17
Won 6-4,7-5	4.20	4.20

While my estimates weren't perfect for all 7 matches, they were close, and from the 3rd match on no more than 0.02 off and exact on 2 of the ratings.  I think that is accuracy I can live with.

If you received a DQ letter that included your ratings like this player did, please contact me and I'll generate a report for you for free comparing my estimates with the actual ratings and helping you understand why the ratings were what they were.  You may also contact me if you are just interested in purchasing an individual or team report as well.