I do find it interesting that twitter announcements of college team new freshmen or transfers now list players' "best " UTR instead of current UTR as many are down .7 or .8 from highest UTR. Case in point Justin Boulais new recruit for OSU with a best UTR of 13.69, currently 12.99. Obviously this year there have been several algorithm changes.
The 2.0 spread hurts players who play rec tennis as well as tournaments, fast-improving high school tennis players, former college players trying to get back in the sport. An ACC player who graduated in 2018 was ranked 13.1 in June '18. His college matches dropped off, he played some rec tennis at 5.0 level, and his UTR dropped to 11.06-2 UTR points down in 12 months. However, he played two tournaments vs current collegians in June, and now his UTR is back to 12.15. Clearly his level had not dropped 2 UTR points, just his level of competition. Now he wasnt back to UTR 13 as he only won 5 games vs a 13.2 but at least that match counted to help him get back to the 12 level.
Players who are unranked who want to get started playing UTR tourneys should practice a lot before their 1st one, choose an open with high level players to get a high project UTR. If an UR player plays UTR 4s and beats them easily, probably the best he would be rated is UTR 6. However an UR player who only get 2 games vs a 10 might be projected as an 8. If a player starts out ranked too low he can only move up its UTR incrementally since he wont get credit for matches 2.0 higher and will get less weight for matches vs opponents 1.0 higher.
It is very rare for a player to beat an opponent 2.0 higher, but a large tourney may have several matches where a player 1.5-1.8 lower than his opponent wins or loses in 3 sets. Those matches should get full weight as the lower ranked opponent probably is underranked. In ITA summer circuit matches this past weekend a 5.63 beat a 7.56 (almost 2.0) in 3 sets, a 10.07 defeated an 11.82, That same 5.63 won 5 games vs an 8.77 about 3 higher but that match wont count. That 5.63 is underranked because he played 4.0 league vs UTR 4s and 5s. At the same tourney a 5.98 lost 0,1 to a 7.95 so that match counts but not the 5.63 vs the 8.77 which while not competitive was not a totally blow out either. It does not serve anyone to count blowout matches between opponents 2.0 apart, but matches that were competitive or not complete blow outs could help a player bump up his UTR. An unranked player lost in 3 to an 8.45 in the B draw so now he has a projected ranking of 8.26. He was supposed to play a 5.26 in backdraw but withdrew so he kept his high projected ranking. Now UTR by its algorithm is encouraging unranked players who lose a close match to one of the higher players in a draw to not play the backdraw if their next opponent is much lower.
UTR changes the algorithm to not count matches 2.0 UTR apart yet hosts on its platform the ITA summer circuits where some of the draws had wide ranges-one tourney had a draw with UTR 6.86 to 12.63. The top seed played 4 matches, and for 3 of the 4 he allowed 3 games or less total over 2 sets. That is not the level based play that UTR is always promoting.
I can see one argument for excluding matches 2.0+ in gap regardless of score. UTR wants to expand the high school teams reporting scores in their database. There are quite a few Texas high schools participating. Many high school teams though have to play much weaker teams and may not want those matches included in UTR to force the drop off of wins vs higher ranked players. Maybe their coaches pushed for 2.0 vs 2.5 exclusion. The solution-UTR should include 12 months of results. When my son was on his HS team, the team had the option to report scores in UTR but declined because the singles players wanted their tournaments wins counted in their 30 matches and not the wins vs lower HS players. Most of the singles players were already playing 60-80 USTA matches a year in addition to HS; they were just playing HS for fun and being part of the team. Some HS matches were vs players close in UTR but others were not. However, if UTR included all matches in a year and gave a lower weight to blowouts vs much lower ranked players, that would satisfy many HS players and coaches. If a player loses 0,0 to an opponent, how do you guess their ranking? Leave those matches out unless the players are close in range which means the player was overrated.