My Wife's UTR is Plummeting!

[Moon Shooter]

I thought about paying for the year, just to see the variablity in my rating and see what thresholds there might be for the decay of matches, or more so how much other player's ratings when I am not playing affect my rating still. I am not sure it shows that though, so anyone pay for UTR and how much data is shown in the rating history?

I am currently a power member. It says it allows you to:

"The UTR Power Subscription provides the following benefits: -Saves $10 per Verified UTR event -See 2 Decimal Places of their UTR rating -Message any college coach or player on the UTR Messaging Platform -Access College Research Tools including UTR College Fit -Analyze their level and their opponents with Advanced Player Analytics -Post-Tennis Media to their Player Profile to get noticed"

I am not sure what the "advanced player analytics" is supposed to be. I can see the prior matches and what the scores were. It costs $10/month but there are some discounts for buying a year package. I was mainly interested in contacting other players for matches but I am letting my subscription lapse because there are very few adults in my area with UTR ratings anyway.

 

[Power Player]

I am currently a power member. It says it allows you to:

"The UTR Power Subscription provides the following benefits: -Saves $10 per Verified UTR event -See 2 Decimal Places of their UTR rating -Message any college coach or player on the UTR Messaging Platform -Access College Research Tools including UTR College Fit -Analyze their level and their opponents with Advanced Player Analytics -Post-Tennis Media to their Player Profile to get noticed"

I am not sure what the "advanced player analytics" is supposed to be. I can see the prior matches and what the scores were. It costs $10/month but there are some discounts for buying a year package. I was mainly interested in contacting other players for matches but I am letting my subscription lapse because there are very few adults in my area with UTR ratings anyway.

Hmm..so not worth it? I was considering doing a UTR league.

 

[Moon Shooter]

I would say utr may be better if you play at least 7 singles and 7 doubles rated matches per year. Total 14. Exactly how many is dependent on how many rated matches your opponents also play. But if you play fewer than that I think the ntrp rating from something like tennis re ord is likely better and certainly something that Schmke would offer would be better.

Keep in mind utr pulls from usta matches but not vice versa. So it will help improve the accuracy of your utr rating by playing in a utr league. But when you play in a usta league the rating accuracy of both is improved.

 

[ChaelAZ]

UTR's rating decay is still what I guess is good if you play a lot, or bad if you have a lot of breaks between rated matches.

 

[Moon Shooter]

UTR never considers any games after they are 12 months old. This will doom their system for most adult rec players but I find it hard to believe it would be good for any players other than perhaps junior players. I do not think your rating necessarily drops due to you not actively posting games but I could never get a clear confirmation of that.

When it comes to adult rec tennis where players might only play a dozen rated matches a year the big problem will be a lack of data. UTR shoots itself in the foot by not allowing any games after a year but also likely hurts itself by completely separating out doubles and singles. In theory I like the idea of keeping these separate but when you combine it with the 12 month cut off UTR is going to have accuracy issues. I would think they could have doubles and singles effect the other but with diminishing influence. So if you only have 2 singles matches but you have 20 doubles matches then the doubles games could be a larger factor for your singles rating but your singles games would have pretty much no effect on your doubles rating.

USTA shoots itself in the foot by 1) having completely separate rating systems for men and women and 2) only allowing very few matches to be considered. Not only does it have to be a USTA match but not even all USTA matches count such as mixed and certain tournaments etc. I am not sure why USTA doesn't just combine the rating systems by giving men a certain bump in rating to make their ratings equivalent to the women - whether that is a .4 or .6 whatever. It may vary depending on the level but they almost certainly have a pretty good idea since so many mixed doubles games are played. They could then just have the ratings go up to 7.5 or 8. This would make the mixed doubles leagues much better and greatly increase the accuracy of everyone's ratings because all of these matches would be considered. You could also have some leagues with men and women on the team playing singles as well as doubles. This would make it easier for smaller areas to have teams. And yes they should allow more matches to be considered - even if they did something like a UTR rating with verified and unverified ratings.

 

[ChaelAZ]

UTR never considers any games after they are 12 months old. This will doom their system for most adult rec players but I find it hard to believe it would be good for any players other than perhaps junior players. I do not think your rating necessarily drops due to you not actively posting games but I could never get a clear confirmation of that.

I think the rating is much more dynamic and does have a decay pretty darn quick if you do not post current matches consistenly. I had a solid win and a few close matches in the D1 line for our 4.0 league and I shot up to 5.5. Then have not played in the last month and dropped to 5.1. Something in the mix of other player ratings and no active play makes a difference.

 

[Moon Shooter]

I think the rating is much more dynamic and does have a decay pretty darn quick if you do not post current matches consistenly. I had a solid win and a few close matches in the D1 line for our 4.0 league and I shot up to 5.5. Then have not played in the last month and dropped to 5.1. Something in the mix of other player ratings and no active play makes a difference.

I have just been watching my own rating jump around after 3 doubles matches. It was at 3.55 and has been constantly bouncing around because few adults play that many matches in 12 months. This means matches are constantly dropping off the radar and ratings are constantly bouncing around. It is now at 6.21 even though I haven't played any matches since I was rated 3.55. In part it is because I have only played 3 matches but seems unlikely this will ever settle into something reliable.

Tennis & Pickleball Ratings & Events | UTR Sports

Find tennis and pickleball events, leagues, and tournaments near you. Get your free UTR Rating and UTR Pickleball Rating (UTR-P) within minutes.

app.universaltennis.com

My hunch is they do not actually decrease your rating because you are not recording matches. I suspect your rating may go up as well as down as people games fall off the cliff of consideration.

 

[ChaelAZ]

My hunch is they do not actually decrease your rating because you are not recording matches.

As mentioned, I understand that for active juniors, college players, etc, but even they have off seasons so seem counter-intuitive to me to decay a rating so quickly. I understand dropping them off though.

But, I also think the decay could be a way to encourage people to play more to keep their rating up, so a bit of marketing there too.

 

[Moon Shooter]

Chael
UTR lacks transparency so who knows what they are doing? But it is clear that their system is bad for adult rec tennis because they entirely focus their rating system on people that play many more matches than we do. I'm back down to a 4.30. It bounces around because few adult rec players I have played will ever have more than a provisional rating and many will quickly switch to unrated as their last match falls off the 12 month cliff.

In your case it may be that someone you (or your opponent or partner) played against suddenly became unrated! Or perhaps a game your partner played suddenly was no longer against someone that was unrated but highly rated. Thus your doubles partner shot up in rating and thus you go down.

It is hard to imagine how UTR can keep the draconian 12 month cut off and keep sensible ratings for adult rec tennis. A game from 13 months ago or even 28 months ago may not be ideal but it is better than nothing.

 

[antony]

There is a decay rate to ratings

 

[Moon Shooter]

There is a decay rate to ratings

It depends what you mean it certainly has this:

"Time Degradation – As prior matches get older, less weight is given. Since the algorithm is a representation of current form, it gives more credit to matches played within the last few months."

Understanding the Algorithm - Complete Summary

UTR Rating is a modified elo rating system that promotes fair and competitive play across the tennis world. Players are rated based on actual results, not age, gender, nationality, or socioeconomic status. When you understand your skill level,...

support.universaltennis.com

But that is different than saying your rating will go down if you don't enter more recent scores. It may go up due to this time degradation. If your early results were worse than your later results your rating should go up due to this effect.

I have not seen UTR directly address whether players rating will actually go down just because they do not recent match results.