Question about getting bumped down

[martymule]

I was a 4.0 last year and I guess my season was good enough to get bumped up to 4.5. I spent this season (5 matches) getting pummeled at 4.5; I may have won an average of 2 games a set in all of my matches. Anyway, is there a certain duration of time that you must spend at a level before you get bumped down? Or is it based solely on your dynamic rating at the end of the year? It really makes no difference to me; I'll play at whatever level the computer tells me to. There are a lot of threads on here about getting bumped up - but not too many about how it works when you get bumped down. Thanks.

 

[Tennis Is Magic]

I was a 4.0 last year and I guess my season was good enough to get bumped up to 4.5. I spent this season (5 matches) getting pummeled at 4.5; I may have won an average of 2 games a set in all of my matches. Anyway, is there a certain duration of time that you must spend at a level before you get bumped down? Or is it based solely on your dynamic rating at the end of the year? It really makes no difference to me; I'll play at whatever level the computer tells me to. There are a lot of threads on here about getting bumped up - but not too many about how it works when you get bumped down. Thanks.

Based on the fact you were recently bumped up, your dynamic is probably pretty low. That being said, 2 games a set isn't that bad, really. If you were an established 4.5, I don't think you'd be bumped down, but since your dynamic is probably on the low end for 4.5, I wouldn't be surprised if you were bumped down or stayed at 4.5. Depends on the guys you played. Did you play singles or doubles? At which spot?

 

[J_R_B]

I was a 4.0 last year and I guess my season was good enough to get bumped up to 4.5. I spent this season (5 matches) getting pummeled at 4.5; I may have won an average of 2 games a set in all of my matches. Anyway, is there a certain duration of time that you must spend at a level before you get bumped down? Or is it based solely on your dynamic rating at the end of the year? It really makes no difference to me; I'll play at whatever level the computer tells me to. There are a lot of threads on here about getting bumped up - but not too many about how it works when you get bumped down. Thanks.

Unless you have a basis for a medical appeal, it's all based on the dynamic rating at year-end. If the system were implemented even-handedly, you would have a chance of being bumped down. The last two years, the USTA has made across-the-board adjustments tothe actual dynamic ratings to ensure that more people were bumped up. This also prevented a lot of people from being bumped down that would have otherwise.

 

[Setmatch45]

You should be able to ask to be moved down you do that on the usta web site

 

[dcdoorknob]

It's hard to know for sure. I can only tell you my experience. I was bumped up to 3.5 in 2010 in the Great Bump Up (after only being 4-3 at 3.0 the previous year) and spent the year getting pummeled like you described. No wins, closest losses were 6-1, 7-5 and 3 and 3, but the others were all 0 and 1 or 0 and 2 or 1 and 3.

I wasn't bumped down though. The problem was probably that I was playing mostly good to very good 3.5s in singles (most had solid winning records), so the computer didn't expect me to win a ton of games, so the scorelines were probably still in line with a low 3.5. So the scorelines themselves won't really tell the whole story, it also depends on how strong or weak the people you played were within the level. If you are losing 2 and 2 to people who are hardly winning any other matches at the 4.5 level (even better if they are playing up!), then you may well have a decent chance of being bumped down. If you lose by the same scoreline to people who are winning 80% of their matches, that's probably not helping you to get bumped down at all.