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I could see barring teams with x% of self-rated players or limiting self-rated players to playing x number of times in the playoffs but excluding self-raters from playoffs completely? That goes against the grain of competitive league play, IMO. And even then, the serious sandbagger will just...

How Do You Tell? Quick question: How do you know if your rating was updated if it didn't change? When I search for my name I see my rating hasn't changed but I can't tell for sure if that means I'm going to stay at my current level or it just hasn't updated yet.

I believe this is the operative phrase here. Yes, I understand that appealing your self rating is fairly straight forward. I've seen it happen often: misunderstood the questions, clicked the wrong button, etc. However, appealing a self-rating and a computer-generated rating are two...

I hear you. The idea of blowing close to an entire day (1 hr+ drive, 2+ hours play, .5 hours post-match chatting, 1 hr+ drive back) doesn't appeal to me either. I know the spousal unit wouldn't be pleased. Unfortunately, I know there are some areas where travelling is your only option. You...

I think you guys are missing the point (or I am) - the OP is trying to get out of having to travel to play USTA. I know of one instance where a guy was bumped to 4.5 in our area but there were no teams available to play. He appealled on these grounds and was granted a lower rating...however...

I heard the opposite That’s too funny. I talked to a league rep a few weeks ago who said the USTA basically admitted that this year’s bump up was a mistake, largely due to it severely depleting the 2.5-3.0 levels in some/many areas. Per this individual they were going to “correct” this by...

Televised? Anyone know if/where this final will be televised?

Just because they did "something" doesn't automatically make it praise worthy. Let's be honest about what this bump up hasn't done: 1. It hasn't fixed the problem of sandbagging; it's just gotten rid of the existing crop of sandbaggers. 2. It hasn't leveled the playing field. When you do a...

Whenever you tinker with an established system there are going to be problems. It'll probably take a year or so for the different levels to normalize. If this thing is a dismal failure they're probably not going to admit error. They'll probably quietly increase the number of bump downs…or...

Look up the March issue of Tennis with Melanie Oudin on the cover and (in JavierLW's words :)) the "lame" USTA magazine with Tracy Austin on the cover which can be found here: http://www.usta.com/USTA/Global/About_Us/USTA_Magazine/MarchApril2010/Leveling_the_playing_field.aspx That's the...

Rabbit is correct – it was more or less a blanket move. One of the rationales for doing so was repeat post season winners but the pervading sentiment is that it was done to level the playing field. And I say "more or less a blanket move" because they specifically targeted the 3.0-4.5 levels and...

Not by the numbers the USTA posted. http://tt.tennis-warehouse.com/showthread.php?t=300303 That's the big question mark I had. In the past, bump downs were rare.

The difference in your local poll as opposed to this one might be your area + the rating of your pals. Look at it this way, based on the numbers, the majority of bump ups occurred at the 3.0-3.5 levels so if for every level a certain percentage were incorrectly bumped, the numbers at those two...

I meant on this board...and I'm kind of surprised you missed them, the one below was started in Nov '09. http://tt.tennis-warehouse.com/showthread.php?t=300303 Actually, there's a pretty neat graph at the beginning of this thread. There was also an article in Tennis magazine (March 2010...

There were lengthy discussions on the numbers and what they meant when it all came out. And those are the totals, not nationwide average. What really strikes me is the numbers at the other end of the spectrum and makes me wonder why there is a 1.0 - 2.5 rating at all. It's not like there's...

Look at the official website (I believe these numbers were also mailed to every USTA member): http://tennislink.usta.com/leagues/reports/NTRP/FindRating.asp At the bottom is a chart with the total number of players at any given level and the number of players who were moved up, down, and...

I'm not a proponent of the bump up for several reasons but I think it's a bit of a stretch to think that the GOOD votes are mainly USTA employees. The bump up numbers were well published, even on the USTA website so getting those percentages wouldn't take a lot of work. From talking to...

I voted BAD because in my area men's 3.0 play has completely disappeared. That means that any new tennis players will be forced to play on a 3.5 team, if they can find one that will take them. I don't see how people see this bump as a fix for sandbagging. At best it's a temporary one...

If they can institute a rule that 50% of players on a team must be rated at the given level then they can also have a rule that 50% of the players must be computer rated for that team to compete in the post-season. If they make a rule that says that a self-rated player may only compete in X...

I don't know Topaz, to me it seems like a band-aid that doesn't address the underlying problem – eliminating the benefit from self-rating below your level. Again, I just didn't see a lot of sandbaggers in my area who stayed at one level and consistently went deep into the playoffs. It was...

I think (hope) Topaz's story was by far the exception, not the rule. And if what this official said was true, the ratings shift doesn't make sense at all. All this current move has done is move the existing sandbaggers where they belong while not correcting the overarching problem. We all...

There's an article in the March 2010 issue of Tennis Magazine that discusses the USTA bump. Did anyone else scratch their head at this paragraph? This doesn't jibe with my experiences with sandbaggers. Typically, we'd see teams where an ex-college player who hadn't played in 10 years...

By your standards, I can't think of a single WTA player that I'd consider beautiful – most are just cute with a few leaning toward pretty. Ivanovic can take some odd pictures every now and then and can lean towards "soft" but looks-wise she's at the top of the heap when I look at the rest of the...

He is on record as saying that points/ranking do not matter to him. Even is it did, are a few points worth more damage to already suspect knees? And seriously, Henin came into the AO unseeded and made it to the finals. If Nadal drops to the #10 spot or lower, does anyone here think for a second...

Maybe it's not outside the range of possibility that he's 100% - didn't Soderling go out with a wrist injury at the AO? And he just won a tourney – but with his history of knee problems I'd think he'd want to give it a lot more rest. And for ****'s sake, why enter a knee-pounding tournament like...

I've been wondering what ever happened to N. Vaidisova for a while now (other than the obligatory "It's The Worm"): http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2010/writers/jon_wertheim/02/10/wednesday.mailbag/index.html#ixzz0fMAxde7u The wording in Wertheim's response - "creepy…unpleasant…not a...

Too true! How she lost to Mynska is beyond me.

Yeah, and he hasn't found a cure for cancer, eliminated world hunger, or brought peace to the Middle East! What a bum! Someone should add these black marks to his Wikipedia entry! Nothing huh? Do you have any evidence to back that claim up, other than your obvious bias against Federer?

It's the sport not the player. Hasn't Sharapova surpassed Federer in endorsement money? Here's Miss Marketability – tall, blond, American (I probably know more Russian than she does), decent looking (there are better on tour IMO) – what has she done for tennis? Seriously, does anyone...

What's worse? Retiring with an injury or standing there and obviously giving up (i.e. not going for shots, letting every ball go by you, etc)? What's the point? I saw a match like that a while ago, can't remember who was playing though. The guy was just limping from one side of the court to...