4.5 vs 5.0

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pancho23

New User
Hi - wanted to see if I am thinking about this the right way

A 4.5 is generally a very good high school player that qualified for their respective state tournament and if they decided to play in college it would be at a community college/D3 school

A 5.0 is someone who was one of the highest ranked players at a D3 school or a regular player at a D1 school

If a 4.5 has a very good day and a 5.0 has a very bad day the 4.5 player can beat him.

Going from a 4.5 to 5.0 for someone in their 20s/30s is difficult because at that point 1) if there are any flaws in your technique it is very difficult to relearn it given how ingrained your muscle memory is; 2) seems like 5.0 players are more athletic/have better footwork - again this seems difficult to improve as you get older; 3) it is harder to find enough people who are better than you to play enough matches to improve your game to get to 5.0 as doing ball machine practice has its limits

Thoughts?
 
I think you are mainly thinking of singles where it is rare to see 4.5 singles players become 5.0s after their twenties. In doubles some players get better with more experience and might become 5.0s at a later stage in their lives. Since the USTA doesn’t have separate rankings for singles and doubles, the ratings of many 40+ older players is purely based on their doubles skills.
 
socallefty said:
In doubles some players get better with more experience and might become 5.0s at a later stage in their lives. Since the USTA doesn’t have separate rankings for singles and doubles, the ratings of many 40+ older players is purely based on their doubles skills.
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i'll attest to that :P
my 4.5 buddies (that played singles for my 4.5 team last year, but didn't get bumped) are still kicking my butt in our singles practices... :P they genuinely enjoy harassing me saying, "i just crushed a 5.0..." or similar.
 
Not trying to be snarky here. A 4.5 is a player who beats other 4.5 players in about half his/her USTA league matches. A 5.0 does the same. Any other measure is purely subjective, eg "I don't play USTA matches or tournaments but I won a few games from a 4.5 so I must be one, too."
 
The 5.0 players I see are somewhere around an 8UTR. If you play for a decent D3 school that 8 UTR will get throttled.

Our experience with our son who is a decent D3 player last summer between playing ITAs/UTR money tournaments or 5.0 tennis was that ITAs/UTRs were much more challenging and not to bother with USTA league play until he is older and he has fewer options.

I am old and don't play at a 4.5/5.0 level but from what I have seen 5.0 tend to be former college players who established their careers and then went back to tennis so their technique is pretty sound they just have lost a step.
 
pancho23 said:
A 5.0 is someone who was one of the highest ranked players at a D3 school or a regular player at a D1 school
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D3 is a massively wide range. Some D3 schools may have no players who could be 4.5, while the top players in other D3 schools could easily play at 5.5
pancho23 said:
If a 4.5 has a very good day and a 5.0 has a very bad day the 4.5 player can beat him.
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The NTRP ratings are discrete cutoffs in the continuum of tennis ability. There is inevitably going to be some overlap among top-rated 4.5s and bottom-rated 5.0s

This is without taking in consideration all the 5.0s who play exclusively doubles (mostly older players) and probably wouldn't be rated 5.0 if they played singles

So yes, a 4.5 can beat a 5.0 even if they are both playing at their usual level. But an average 5.0 should crush an average 4.5
 
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USTA 4.5 and 5.0 can vary greatly by area. At the college level, it varies by the divisions and conferences.
Here's some university kids. Some D1, some D3. How do your local 5.0's measure up?

 
WYK said:
USTA 4.5 and 5.0 can vary greatly by area. At the college level, it varies by the divisions and conferences.
Here's some university kids. Some D1, some D3. How do your local 5.0's measure up?

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A good comparison are the ITAs where D1, D2, D3 players compete against each other. I chuckled when I saw this as I have been to some where some of the Whitewater guys are playing.
 
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pancho23 said:

here's singles - 4.5 right?
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Titles aren't always accurate, but the explanation of their history and the fact that Scott (who really IS a strong 4.5) says he is expecting some 5.0+ singles suggests otherwise. Mike also played D1 and beat Mark Sansait 1 and 4 (another very strong 4.5 who played D3). You can go look up Mike's rating if you want, but that's up to you. So with all that info at your fingertips, I am curious, why would you think it's 4.5?
 
OP's original post feels...fairly accurate? as someone noted the only real measure is who beats who in a structured competitive setting.

4.5 and 5.0 can look pretty similar...you'll find big hitters etc. in both groups. 5.0 play, you just see way less misses on easy stuff.

one difference though, at 4.5 you'll still see some stroke and footwork weirdness etc that guys find a way to make work...at a sanctioned 5.0 level, most of that tends to get weeded out and both players typically look like 'very good tennis players'...if that's a fudgy enough metric :)

a few years ago i was playing in a competitive 5.0 league, and yeah a lot of former d3 players in there fwiw. going back to OPs original post, a regular d1 player, or just a year or two out, is probably more of a 5.5...they are, to use another squishy metric, 'better than most very good players'...either incredibly consistent, or a truly big weapon, and in particular...very good second serves. that's a big one as you go higher up.
 
You see very few ex-college players playing competitive rec tennis within the first 5-8 years after they finish college. It seems like most of them want a break from competitive tennis after being consumed with it throughout their childhood and teen years. Plus they are probably busy getting started on their careers and then starting a family etc.

A lot of them come back to rec tennis at a club in their thirties often because they had kids and now their kids are starting tennis lessons. So, it is more common to see ex-college players playing USTA tennis when they are 10-15 years removed from their active college playing days than when they are just 1-5 years out of college. You might see recent graduate ex-college players playing USTA league tennis only if they’ve been actively recruited by captains who try to find these self-rated ‘diamonds in the rough’ to go to Nationals often.

When an ex-college player comes back to competitive rec tennis 10-15 years after his college days, often the determining factor of his singles level might be his current fitness rather than his ‘glory days‘ level as some stay fit and others can be overweight. For doubles, their active college level might be more of a measure of their rec USTA rating even 10-15 years later as fitness is not as much of a factor covering half the court.
 
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socallefty said:
You see very few ex-college players playing competitive rec tennis within the first 5-8 years after they finish college. It seems like most of them want a break from competitive tennis after being consumed with it throughout their childhood and teen years. Plus they are probably busy getting started on their careers and then starting a family etc.

A lot of them come back to rec tennis at a club in their thirties often because they had kids and now their kids are starting tennis lessons. So, it is more common to see ex-college players playing USTA tennis when they are 10-15 years removed from their active college playing days than when they are just 1-5 years out of college. You might see recent graduate ex-college players playing USTA league tennis only if they’ve been actively recruited by captains who try to find these self-rated ‘diamonds in the rough’ to go to Nationals often.

When an ex-college player comes back to competitive rec tennis 10-15 years after his college days, often the determining factor of his singles level might be his current fitness rather than his ‘glory days‘ level as some stay fit and others can be overweight. For doubles, their active college level might be more of a measure of their rec USTA rating even 10-15 years later as fitness is not as much of a factor covering half the court.
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Most of us play open club matches. There's far more glory in it anyways. Most of us consider USTA matches bracket racing.


 
Digital Atheist said:
Titles aren't always accurate, but the explanation of their history and the fact that Scott (who really IS a strong 4.5) says he is expecting some 5.0+ singles suggests otherwise. Mike also played D1 and beat Mark Sansait 1 and 4 (another very strong 4.5 who played D3). You can go look up Mike's rating if you want, but that's up to you. So with all that info at your fingertips, I am curious, why would you think it's 4.5?
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I think Mark is still an NTRP 5.0, though by his own admission he isn't in that level's shape currently.
 
socallefty said:
You see very few ex-college players playing competitive rec tennis within the first 5-8 years after they finish college. It seems like most of them want a break from competitive tennis after being consumed with it throughout their childhood and teen years. Plus they are probably busy getting started on their careers and then starting a family etc.

A lot of them come back to rec tennis at a club in their thirties often because they had kids and now their kids are starting tennis lessons. So, it is more common to see ex-college players playing USTA tennis when they are 10-15 years removed from their active college playing days than when they are just 1-5 years out of college. You might see recent graduate ex-college players playing USTA league tennis only if they’ve been actively recruited by captains who try to find these self-rated ‘diamonds in the rough’ to go to Nationals often.

When an ex-college player comes back to competitive rec tennis 10-15 years after his college days, often the determining factor of his singles level might be his current fitness rather than his ‘glory days‘ level as some stay fit and others can be overweight. For doubles, their active college level might be more of a measure of their rec USTA rating even 10-15 years later as fitness is not as much of a factor covering half the court.
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This was my point exactly above in post 10. Most college players seem to take a break after school and then come back and play.
 
LOBALOT said:
The 5.0 players I see are somewhere around an 8UTR. If you play for a decent D3 school that 8 UTR will get throttled.
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I’m a UTR 8.34 and I just got bumped to 4.5 this season. I can’t tell if UTR or NTRP is ********. They never seem to correlate consistently.
 
Maverick13 said:
I’m a UTR 8.34 and I just got bumped to 4.5 this season. I can’t tell if UTR or NTRP is ********. They never seem to correlate consistently.
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UTR has separate ratings for singles and doubles while USTA does a consolidated rating. If you play a mix of both, that itself should lead to variances between the two systems.
 
Maverick13 said:
I’m a UTR 8.34 and I just got bumped to 4.5 this season. I can’t tell if UTR or NTRP is ********. They never seem to correlate consistently.
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i think i was as high as 8.4 in dubs when i got bumped to 5.0
it's been as low as 6.x recently since i play a bunch of mixed too, and sometimes really get crushed, especially when i'm playing a very high 5+4, or two very high 4.5's (but mx doesn't count toward ntrp i believe)
singles is stuck at ~8 as i havne't played tourneys/singles for usta in a couple years.

are you also playing utr events?

sidenote... at nationals a couple years ago, there was a singles player my team played against... he was a utr9+, rated 4.5, digging further, found that he played plenty of utr singles tourneys with good results, but his team hid him at 3rd dubs with weak players, which, IMO, kept his overall ntrp low... then unleashed him in singles at nationals...
 
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