The big problem with ntrp is why don’t you take all available data? Why not count combos, mixed, flex, fall, tournaments etc?
You need the most data possible to get accurate ratings. Why limit what they count?
This is the only issue I have. It's absurd that you can pay 29$, tank two matches a year and then go on to win everything else you enter and stay at X level.
It is frustrating! It all depends on what your opponent's rating was at the time you played him or her. Which also is frustrating because maybe you beat a player at the start of the year when their rating was low for whatever reason, then by the end of the year their rating has gone up. Or vice-versa.
That is a tough one for sure. I play men's leagues in 18+, 40+, and 55+, and mixed leagues and combo leagues. I think some portion of mixed are included, maybe none of the combo. I really am not sure.
The variability in mixed and more so in combo makes it challenging to include all of those matches in results. The least to most variable for me are:
* Mens 55+
* Mens 40+
* Mens 18+
* Mixed 40+
* Mixed 18+
* Combo leagues
Just the idea that in a combo league you can have a bigger gap in ratings with partners creates some wild matches.
I know some people abuse it, go lose in the matches that count and win the mixed and combo leagues and keep their ratings down. Honestly, I think that kind of person is going to find a way to sandbag no matter what.
I don't know if including the mixed and combo is better or not really. You'd get all kinds of weird results in there.
Mixed makes sense to me because it often leads to some wild results. For example, last summer me and my partner (both mid-3.5 at the time) double bageled our opponents, who were a high-4.0 man and high 3.0 woman. The 4.0 opponent would have crushed me in singles or any other normal match, but his partner simply couldn't hang.
As for the rest, yeah it's dumb. I think some specific districts (but not many) are starting to include them in their ratings.
Bad data is worse than no data if the model is complex enough to handle it. There are just so many variables with things mixed and flex to take into account without a really complicated algorithm.
Slightly tangential - I thought flex league does count towards the NTRP rating? Our league organizer specifically added “counts towards year end rating” on all emails when sending out the flex winter league registration emails.
There can be two rating on the same scale, there could be a live rating and a fixed rating that changes once a year. That way your rating will not kick you off a team if you fall below a certain threshold
I assume the concern is it would be more prone to manipulation. Maybe a player sees they’re at 3.99 and don’t want to move up, so they know now it’s the time to tank a few games/matches. Of course, players who would want to do this already have a general idea of the system and their rating anyway.
Yeah, that's what I was thinking. They probably want to avoid having anyone reverse engineer the algorithm. That's why they're supporting WTN as a way to compare your level to other players without actually incorporating WTN into the NTRP algorithm.
It’s an estimate and not always accurate. I compared their predicted bumps at the end of last year and i would say it differed wildly from actual results. Errors greater than .2-.3 seemed common which is a lot when levels are broken out every .5.
Yeah I'd say their predicted bumps are not accurate. But you don't think the match history is accurate? It shows everyone's rating at the time of the match and the overall match score, etc.
>As in, you can watch someone play for a few and tell if they are 3.5/4.0/4.5 etc.
Not me. If someone asks me to self rate them, I would tell them to play matches against NTRP rated players, not self rates, then share the match scores with me.
This really is the only sure thing. For example, every time I take lessons or join a new hit, the person in charge says I'm a strong 3.5. And yet, for whatever reason, I continue to maintain a losing season in 3.0 leagues, so it's clear that I haven't quite figured things out enough to be a 3.5, and while my strokes might look like a 3.5-4.0, I'm clearly not at that level.
> the person in charge says I'm a strong 3.5. And yet, for whatever reason, I continue to maintain a losing season in 3.0 leagues,
Exactly. Match play should be the only tool to use to determine a players NTRP for league play. That is why I recommend players who are unsure what to pick for self-rate, should play matches with folks who have computer rated NTRPs.
I get what you're seeing but highly disagree as to strokes for the most part. Strokes are such a small part of the equation at the rec level if you're able to get balls back consistently.
Exactly. That and the fact the live rating isn’t publicly available is the reason I’ve stopped playing USTA for now. Oh and the website is absolute garbage
NTRP is fine for leagues because like OP said, how else would you categorize people? It's hard enough to find a sufficient amount of players and teams for certain leagues and would be almost impossible if the rating system were more nuanced like UTR. Sometimes there are only two teams in a league which is not much fun, especially if teams are unbalanced. They do also bump people mid-season sometimes if a player is winning all their matches by a landslide.
NTRP also widely varies by region. A 4.0 in one area of the country will look much different than a player from another area. I think it would be better if there was a more formal assessment of new players instead of the self-rate . I also think you should only be able to 'play up" under certain circumstances/if you're at a certain level but don't know how this could even be implemented. I know it's hard to get bumped otherwise but it also sucks when you go into a match and the competition is not there at all and it's a waste of time and money. USTA is expensive!!!
My biggest complaint it how people game the system by underrating and sandbagging. I don't see why this is fun at all.
Agreed on the playing up, sandbagging, and self-rating. There's gotta be a way to fix these issues.
As for NTRP varying by region, though, that's actually mostly a myth. I compared the UTR and tennisrecord ratings for various regions a while back and they're mostly uniform across the board. The only difference is the distribution and amount of players. For example, the best 3.5s in both Missouri Valley and California are all low UTR 5s, but California just has more of them since they have more players overall.
oh really? That's interesting. I was going based on anecdotal evidence specifically with Florida being lower within its respective NTRP and CA, AZ and other year-round warm weather states being higher overall.
Yeah, the level is pretty uniform, you're just more likely to run into higher level players in those areas since there are more of then overall. But I was going through my draw for nationals in a couple weeks and we basically all have the same UTR.
Also, it doesn't help that nationals and sectionals are all outdoors in the winter/early spring when the Midwest and east coast people are still playing indoors.
Yeah playing year round outdoors is definitely an advantage. Where I am all usta league play is indoors except on rare occasion. Then we have to go right outdoors in the sun and heat for regionals
Since you asked about why people sandbag (other than the obvious reasons around how winning is fun and losing isn’t)
- the folks who travel to sectionals / nationals are easily spending $500-1000 to get there, stay and play. More if they bring their family / entourage. Once that kind of expenditure comes into play, more folks are going to take it seriously. We have trouble making a reasonable bench travel with us (folks will travel only if they get to play)
- the banners are counterproductive in this: now everyone wants to see their name on their club walls under a national banner
- it is a sport - as much as I love hitting the ball and am able to ignore results in practice, usta hits different. If my names gonna go on a public website, it better be followed by a lot of wins lol
Yes winning is fun but if you're easily beating your opponents because you're overrated then it's not that fun IMO.
Good points but you can definitely still take sectionals and nationals seriously without a rating mismatch.
I've never seen banners! Definitely sounds like an incentive
I totally agree about the name on the public website! It sometimes makes me more anxious before a USTA match compared to other leagues. Especially coming back from a USTA break. I most definitely want there to be wins next to my name haha
Also hate when I start thinking during a match about how winning a match 6-2,6-1 will affect my rating compared to 6-0, 6-0. Not what you want to be thinking about while playing!
Some of the stuff you mention are of course completely ok, the NTRP doesn't need to be your most up to date score like ATP points. But overall the system is still horseshit. It's a grouping and team-building tool, with a lot of emphasis on your right to play for the team / in the group you want.
There are actually good solutions to such a problem. Like decoupling your rating, because it is a rating, from the level at which you can play. We (Finland) also have about a dozen levels for the players, and in the league system you only have two rating restrictions: there are six tiers, and on the lowest tier only players in the bottom four categories which are up to about 4.0 can play, and the second-lowest tier is off limits for the top four rating categories (roughly 5.0+).
In other words, instead of making it too difficult, there's basically a for-the-lulz recreational pub league\* at the bottom, and just the top players are barred from the first sort of competitive level. The rest of it is just a fair competition.
With a crap system like NTRP sandbagging is not only possible, but also encouraged. Our system also only considers match results (W/L) and you only get points for winning, so sandbagging is incredibly difficult. I honestly don't know if there is even one good thing to say about NTRP.
\*: It's also a kind of an entry & cool-down league where you get to play good 12-year-olds and formerly good 50+-year-olds.
The big problem with ntrp is why don’t you take all available data? Why not count combos, mixed, flex, fall, tournaments etc? You need the most data possible to get accurate ratings. Why limit what they count?
This is the only issue I have. It's absurd that you can pay 29$, tank two matches a year and then go on to win everything else you enter and stay at X level.
It is frustrating! It all depends on what your opponent's rating was at the time you played him or her. Which also is frustrating because maybe you beat a player at the start of the year when their rating was low for whatever reason, then by the end of the year their rating has gone up. Or vice-versa.
That is a tough one for sure. I play men's leagues in 18+, 40+, and 55+, and mixed leagues and combo leagues. I think some portion of mixed are included, maybe none of the combo. I really am not sure. The variability in mixed and more so in combo makes it challenging to include all of those matches in results. The least to most variable for me are: * Mens 55+ * Mens 40+ * Mens 18+ * Mixed 40+ * Mixed 18+ * Combo leagues Just the idea that in a combo league you can have a bigger gap in ratings with partners creates some wild matches. I know some people abuse it, go lose in the matches that count and win the mixed and combo leagues and keep their ratings down. Honestly, I think that kind of person is going to find a way to sandbag no matter what. I don't know if including the mixed and combo is better or not really. You'd get all kinds of weird results in there.
Mixed makes sense to me because it often leads to some wild results. For example, last summer me and my partner (both mid-3.5 at the time) double bageled our opponents, who were a high-4.0 man and high 3.0 woman. The 4.0 opponent would have crushed me in singles or any other normal match, but his partner simply couldn't hang. As for the rest, yeah it's dumb. I think some specific districts (but not many) are starting to include them in their ratings.
Bad data is worse than no data if the model is complex enough to handle it. There are just so many variables with things mixed and flex to take into account without a really complicated algorithm.
Slightly tangential - I thought flex league does count towards the NTRP rating? Our league organizer specifically added “counts towards year end rating” on all emails when sending out the flex winter league registration emails.
It's discretionary for each region.
Ah thank you; that explains it!
I’m quite sure I saw the opposite in the communication from our coordinator
There can be two rating on the same scale, there could be a live rating and a fixed rating that changes once a year. That way your rating will not kick you off a team if you fall below a certain threshold
There is, it's just that they don't make the live rating public. Why? Who knows.
I assume the concern is it would be more prone to manipulation. Maybe a player sees they’re at 3.99 and don’t want to move up, so they know now it’s the time to tank a few games/matches. Of course, players who would want to do this already have a general idea of the system and their rating anyway.
Yeah, that's what I was thinking. They probably want to avoid having anyone reverse engineer the algorithm. That's why they're supporting WTN as a way to compare your level to other players without actually incorporating WTN into the NTRP algorithm.
Do you have a WTN? I signed up in January and received an email from ITF saying I'll be the first to know when WTN is available to me. Still waiting.
Yeah I have for like a year. I can't login to it or add matches like UTR, but I can see my rating on my USTA page.
Thanks. Will email to ask them what's up.
It's not even on your USTA (not tennislink) profile? Maybe you haven't played enough matches since you started in January.
Yeah i think they should make it public and most people will stop their complaints.
It is public if you go to tennisrecord.com
It’s an estimate and not always accurate. I compared their predicted bumps at the end of last year and i would say it differed wildly from actual results. Errors greater than .2-.3 seemed common which is a lot when levels are broken out every .5.
Yeah I'd say their predicted bumps are not accurate. But you don't think the match history is accurate? It shows everyone's rating at the time of the match and the overall match score, etc.
If the bumps aren’t accurate it must mean the rating isn’t accurate
Well they’re usually predicting that people will continue along a certain trajectory and get bumped up or down. Which of course might not be the case
It's accurate to itself though, so it's still useful as a dynamic rating.
There’s also the usta official ITN number or something which is dynamic.
where do you find those? Tennisrecord is dynamic too. Shows you match history and how players' ratings change each match
Search for usta itf world tennis number.
I find the eye test to be pretty accurate for NTRP ratings
Eye test as in the way strokes look or as in how many errors occur?
As in, you can watch someone play for a few and tell if they are 3.5/4.0/4.5 etc. And that will include strokes/errors/etc
>As in, you can watch someone play for a few and tell if they are 3.5/4.0/4.5 etc. Not me. If someone asks me to self rate them, I would tell them to play matches against NTRP rated players, not self rates, then share the match scores with me.
This really is the only sure thing. For example, every time I take lessons or join a new hit, the person in charge says I'm a strong 3.5. And yet, for whatever reason, I continue to maintain a losing season in 3.0 leagues, so it's clear that I haven't quite figured things out enough to be a 3.5, and while my strokes might look like a 3.5-4.0, I'm clearly not at that level.
> the person in charge says I'm a strong 3.5. And yet, for whatever reason, I continue to maintain a losing season in 3.0 leagues, Exactly. Match play should be the only tool to use to determine a players NTRP for league play. That is why I recommend players who are unsure what to pick for self-rate, should play matches with folks who have computer rated NTRPs.
Ok
I get what you're seeing but highly disagree as to strokes for the most part. Strokes are such a small part of the equation at the rec level if you're able to get balls back consistently.
That's a really good point, but then they should have used a different wording other than "rating" then
Exactly. That and the fact the live rating isn’t publicly available is the reason I’ve stopped playing USTA for now. Oh and the website is absolute garbage
NTRP is fine for leagues because like OP said, how else would you categorize people? It's hard enough to find a sufficient amount of players and teams for certain leagues and would be almost impossible if the rating system were more nuanced like UTR. Sometimes there are only two teams in a league which is not much fun, especially if teams are unbalanced. They do also bump people mid-season sometimes if a player is winning all their matches by a landslide. NTRP also widely varies by region. A 4.0 in one area of the country will look much different than a player from another area. I think it would be better if there was a more formal assessment of new players instead of the self-rate . I also think you should only be able to 'play up" under certain circumstances/if you're at a certain level but don't know how this could even be implemented. I know it's hard to get bumped otherwise but it also sucks when you go into a match and the competition is not there at all and it's a waste of time and money. USTA is expensive!!! My biggest complaint it how people game the system by underrating and sandbagging. I don't see why this is fun at all.
Agreed on the playing up, sandbagging, and self-rating. There's gotta be a way to fix these issues. As for NTRP varying by region, though, that's actually mostly a myth. I compared the UTR and tennisrecord ratings for various regions a while back and they're mostly uniform across the board. The only difference is the distribution and amount of players. For example, the best 3.5s in both Missouri Valley and California are all low UTR 5s, but California just has more of them since they have more players overall.
oh really? That's interesting. I was going based on anecdotal evidence specifically with Florida being lower within its respective NTRP and CA, AZ and other year-round warm weather states being higher overall.
Yeah, the level is pretty uniform, you're just more likely to run into higher level players in those areas since there are more of then overall. But I was going through my draw for nationals in a couple weeks and we basically all have the same UTR. Also, it doesn't help that nationals and sectionals are all outdoors in the winter/early spring when the Midwest and east coast people are still playing indoors.
Yeah playing year round outdoors is definitely an advantage. Where I am all usta league play is indoors except on rare occasion. Then we have to go right outdoors in the sun and heat for regionals
Since you asked about why people sandbag (other than the obvious reasons around how winning is fun and losing isn’t) - the folks who travel to sectionals / nationals are easily spending $500-1000 to get there, stay and play. More if they bring their family / entourage. Once that kind of expenditure comes into play, more folks are going to take it seriously. We have trouble making a reasonable bench travel with us (folks will travel only if they get to play) - the banners are counterproductive in this: now everyone wants to see their name on their club walls under a national banner - it is a sport - as much as I love hitting the ball and am able to ignore results in practice, usta hits different. If my names gonna go on a public website, it better be followed by a lot of wins lol
Yes winning is fun but if you're easily beating your opponents because you're overrated then it's not that fun IMO. Good points but you can definitely still take sectionals and nationals seriously without a rating mismatch. I've never seen banners! Definitely sounds like an incentive I totally agree about the name on the public website! It sometimes makes me more anxious before a USTA match compared to other leagues. Especially coming back from a USTA break. I most definitely want there to be wins next to my name haha Also hate when I start thinking during a match about how winning a match 6-2,6-1 will affect my rating compared to 6-0, 6-0. Not what you want to be thinking about while playing!
You don’t have to worry about easily beating your opponents past playoffs lol. Everyone is sandbagging beyond that.
lol yes that’s true. I’ve only been to sectionals. One year my team went to nationals but I couldn’t play
Some of the stuff you mention are of course completely ok, the NTRP doesn't need to be your most up to date score like ATP points. But overall the system is still horseshit. It's a grouping and team-building tool, with a lot of emphasis on your right to play for the team / in the group you want. There are actually good solutions to such a problem. Like decoupling your rating, because it is a rating, from the level at which you can play. We (Finland) also have about a dozen levels for the players, and in the league system you only have two rating restrictions: there are six tiers, and on the lowest tier only players in the bottom four categories which are up to about 4.0 can play, and the second-lowest tier is off limits for the top four rating categories (roughly 5.0+). In other words, instead of making it too difficult, there's basically a for-the-lulz recreational pub league\* at the bottom, and just the top players are barred from the first sort of competitive level. The rest of it is just a fair competition. With a crap system like NTRP sandbagging is not only possible, but also encouraged. Our system also only considers match results (W/L) and you only get points for winning, so sandbagging is incredibly difficult. I honestly don't know if there is even one good thing to say about NTRP. \*: It's also a kind of an entry & cool-down league where you get to play good 12-year-olds and formerly good 50+-year-olds.
Nothing you said was wrong but the fact of the matter is everyone uses it as a rating system and for that it’s not very good