General WTN thread

Moon Shooter

Hall of Fame
I'm pretty excited from what I am hearing how this number might be implemented by USTA. There are still some unanswered questions about who can participate in events that use a WTN but so far I think this will be a large boon to adult rec tennis.

Generally speaking these rating systems are well tested and work well when they are implemented correctly. And by that I mean they work well when they include more relevant data. In general all of the current Tennis rating systems suffer mainly because the entity using the system ignores too much data.

Things I like about WTN:

A) Goes back 4 years (perhaps even earlier since they say they are using data from 2016) as opposed to the hard and arbitrary 12 month cut off used by UTR. The algorithm does count older games less than current games and there is no reason to just completely ignore games older than 12 months - especially if that is the only data you have.

B) Includes many more matches than NTRP so it should be a much better predictor of strength. NTRP does not allow truly coed matches and so the ratings are pretty much completely seperate for men and women. Plus this makes it difficult for smaller areas to form many teams (since you are limited to half the tennis players for most events) and thus the data is very limited. Then you have the issue of mixed games not counting to your ntrp if you have a same gender ntrp. So this system will not only include more matches it will also allow for more matches to take place within it's framework! It will also allow people to play against players under 18 years old and won't as a practical matter exclude younger players that have played in college or high school due to the self rating sheets. So a larger potential pool of players = more tournaments/matches.

C) The software that sets up tournaments seems very feature rich and user friendly. I haven't actually used it yet but this video makes it look pretty nice:

Here are some things I am not sure about:

1) How soon can we have truly coed events? e.g., MM v FM doubles or even MMvFF etc.

2) Can any USTA member set up an event in "tennis serve" or are only certain people allowed to set up a tournament?

3) What are the restrictions on setting up a "tennis serve" event?

4) Will non-usta members be able to participate in these events?

5) Can we have tournaments that run over the course of a few months?

5.5) Will the answers to 1-5 be up to each USTA section so it the answers may depend on what part of the country you live in?

6) ITF often says they base their rating on sets won and lost. This is leading to confusion about how the algorithm works. Heather from USTA said that the algorithm is sensitive to the actual set score. So winning a set 6-0 is treated differently than if you win the set 7-5. But it would be nice if they confirmed this and maybe changed the faq which seems misleading.

7) Will ITF show us what the performance rating for each match was in the history?

8) Our ITF rating will not change if we do not play matches - due to our prior opponents/partners playing new games. The amount of confidence in our rating will go down however. But I am not sure of this: If we do play a match after several weeks will the results of our earlier opponents or partners that may have happened in the interim effect what rating we get after playing again? Or will the only factor be our current rating and out opponent's current rating? (or in the case of doubles also our partners current rating?)

9) Does the algorithm count closer matches more heavily then blow out matches?

10) Is there a limit where the ITF will not count a match if the ratings are far enough apart (unless there is an upset) like UTR does (I think UTR says if the rating difference is over 2 then the match doesn't count unless the underdog wins)?

11) Is there an actual ceiling and floor of ratings at 1 and 40 or will the rating system actually calculate peoples ratings below 1 and over 40 and just show 1 (or 40) for everyone outside those thresh holds?

I would be interested in what other people think about this system and whether they think it will create more interest in adult rec tennis.
 
I need to learn more, what events are going to use WTN instead of NTRP, they are already combining NTRP categories in tournaments just to make a draw, as in lump all the 3.5, 4.0, and 4.5 together or put all 4.5s with Open just to make a draw. WTN would be interesting in that situation, but could work in a tourney with 100 entrants for sure.
 
I would be interested in what other people think about this system and whether they think it will create more interest in adult rec tennis.

I'm not particularly optimistic about that. My personal experience with various rating systems is that the underlying rating system just isn't particularly important. The community around the leagues or tournaments is significantly more important.

If they put in the work to build up adult play, they could do it. But just providing a rating system really doesn't get them very far.
 

Moon Shooter

Hall of Fame
I need to learn more, what events are going to use WTN instead of NTRP, they are already combining NTRP categories in tournaments just to make a draw, as in lump all the 3.5, 4.0, and 4.5 together or put all 4.5s with Open just to make a draw. WTN would be interesting in that situation, but could work in a tourney with 100 entrants for sure.

Check out the video in the original post of this thread. It shows you the flexibility and ease we should be able to set up tournaments with all sorts of different criteria. But basically WTN allows you to play everyone at a certain skill level instead of limiting your pool based on things that have little to do with tennis ability such as, age, gender, and whether you played in high school or college regardless of how good your team or you were.

They may even allow you to play if you don't want to pay $44 per year to the national organization - just charge the cost/profit of running the event to the players. That $44 can be a barrier to many players since they are not sure if they will be asked to play on more than one team. $44 per year then $22 per team you join and then $20/match for court time. So $126 to play 3 matches. If we can set up some tournaments outside and play once a week for five weeks (or 2xs per week for 3 weeks) and everyone pays $25-$35 that is much more reasonable. And it should still be a decent profit to USTA since we are basically just asking to use their software to run and rate the matches.
 

Moon Shooter

Hall of Fame
I'm not particularly optimistic about that. My personal experience with various rating systems is that the underlying rating system just isn't particularly important. The community around the leagues or tournaments is significantly more important.

If they put in the work to build up adult play, they could do it. But just providing a rating system really doesn't get them very far.

You might be right. But your experience has always been with a crap rating system. So we shouldn't be surprised that the crap rating system was not an important reason for people to play in leagues or tournaments.

Hopefully WTN will be good enough to give people an additional reason to play in organized adult rec tennis.
 

Moon Shooter

Hall of Fame
I just saw a usta video on “serve tennis”talking about how it would startreplacing tennislink beginning January of 2021.

It seems normal usta tennis players will not be able set up tournaments. I’m starting to have my doubts.
 
You might be right. But your experience has always been with a crap rating system. So we shouldn't be surprised that the crap rating system was not an important reason for people to play in leagues or tournaments.

Hopefully WTN will be good enough to give people an additional reason to play in organized adult rec tennis.

Well, my experience has been with a lot of ratings systems. Listing out all the ones I can remember -

As a junior, it was whatever the USTA junior ranking system was, it was points-based (you play tournaments to get points, similar to the pro ranking system but for kids). High school tennis - no rating system at all as far as I remember, the high school coach had tryouts and ranked players by the results of those tryouts and then you played other schools, and eventually a season playoffs based on results. College and grad school, played club tennis - no rating systems involved, just clubs with ladders and various tennis groups. Adult team leagues - USTA NTRP (and UTR once, they did a league thing once). I've done USTA NTRP and UTR singles flex leagues as well. Other adult singles flex leagues with their own ranking systems: so far I've run into Ultimate Tennis, San Jose Flex Leagues, Night Owl, Gladiator Tennis. Maybe some other one that I've forgotten. Ultimate Tennis, SJFL, Gladiator all have their own rating system and they all work roughly the same way - they split their player base into levels, if someone wins by a lot all the time or loses by a lot all the time they move up or down a level. Not sure whether the those different leagues all use the same math for determining just how much you have to win by.to move up or down. They show some sort of points, and ultimate tennis and gladiator points look pretty similar, so maybe those are using the same rating system under the hood (Gladiator also reports its scores to UTR, I don't remember whether Ultimate did or not). Night Owl uses runs a globaltennisnetwork ladder which uses the Elo rating system on each season. Gladiator had me play one initial "placement match" to see what level I should start at.

To me, it feels like rating systems are a dime a dozen. There's a few more around that I've never paid attention to that attempt to imitate NTRP (TLN, tennisrecord). If I include those I currently have six different numbers I can look at that tell me how good I am. WTN adds a seventh. Woo.

Is it really going to make a big difference?

I think it will make a difference if some organization uses that as the basis to make a big push to expand adult tennis. But then again, they could do that with UTR, or with NTRP, or with some random other rating system, there's a million to choose from. And it's that push that would be the valuable thing, not the rating system which IMO is just a single component of it.
 
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Moon Shooter

Hall of Fame
Max all of those systems are crap and most are not even related to Elo or Glicko. Really you are including your coach picking players based on his opinion as a rating system? Ok whatever. Elo and Glicko systems work well if they have enough data. This is well established. And the Elo or Glicko ratings you list specifically limit the data and therefore suffer.

It is interesting that ITF wants us to include more data even games at the park!


"ITF World Tennis Number is for:

  • Tennis club members who play a couple of times a week
  • Park players who get on court a few times every summer
  • Kids and adults who are just starting out
  • Seasoned pros playing ITF circuit tournaments.
Even if you haven’t played in years, your ITF World Tennis Number will make it easy to get back on court with players of a similar standard."


This would make the number much more reliable since it would include much more data. Sadly, USTA may try to gut it's effectiveness here, only allowing matches to count if they are run by tennis facilities. So people will not be able to include the data that would make the number more accurate and reliable.
 

schmke

Legend
What scores are missing? League? Tournament? How long ago?

From https://customercare.usta.com/hc/en-us/articles/4414716969492-ITF-World-Tennis-Number-FAQs:

My WTN is wrong. What can I do?

If you see an incorrect match result on your WTN, please contact the event director to have this reviewed. Your WTN will automatically update the following week if a change was made. If it has been more than two weeks since the completion of an event and you find results are missing, please send an email to customercare@usta.com with these details:

• Player’s Name

• Player’s USTA Number

• A link to the event page

• Division
 
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