Three Pacing Errors

Pickleball Ratings

Let's talk about ratings. Competitive play in pickleball for tournaments and some leagues is based on a ratings system from 2.5-6.0. Ratings of higher than 5.0 are pro level pickleball players. 2.5 is generally a beginner rating that represents players who are new to the sport with no racket sport background.



In tournaments, you are generally expected to play your rating or play up. You are not supposed to play down below your rating. Brackets are usually determined by skill and if the bracket is large enough, tournament directors may split the skill levels by ages. The bulk of players fall between 3.0 and 4.0. Those brackets often get split into smaller skill level or skill and age brackets, even in smaller tournaments. Higher skill levels, 4.5-5.0, and the lowest skill level, 2.5, tend to have fewer registrations in a tournament. The players who register as 2.5 are put into the 3.0 brackets because most players at the 2.5 level are not confident enough to play in a tournament yet and tournament directors can't make a bracket with one or two teams. Advanced brackets 4.5-5.0 often get combined for the same reason, there aren't that many teams competing at that level for smaller local tournaments. The larger the tournament, the more likely it becomes that brackets are broken down into smaller subgroups.

Having a rating gives you and tournament directors or league managers a general idea of which brackets or league groups you will be competitive in. It's not fun to play on either side of a pickleball massacre. Having a current rating that is representative of your skill level will help you play in the appropriate groups for tournaments and leagues.

USA Pickleball is the official governing body for our sport of pickleball. They maintain a ratings system for players. That is your official rating for USA Pickleball sanctioned tournaments and events. To get an official USA Pickleball rating by

  1. Become a USA Pickleball member
  2. Compete in a sanctioned tournament

The rating USAP is officially called USA Pickleball Tournament Player Rating (UTPR). There are three possible UTPR ratings for each USAP member; gender doubles, mixed doubles, and singles. You get a rating after you compete in one of those events. For example, I personally have ratings for gender doubles and mixed doubles, but I don't have a rating for singles because I have never competed in singles in a tournament. 

UTPR consists of a 4 digit numeric value that is calculated based on your performance against other players in sanctioned competition. Ratings are rounded down to the nearest half rating for bracket placement. A player with a rating of 3.498 would be placed in the 3.0 bracket. However, players often opt to play up, especially when their rating is on the high end of the lower bracket. If you compete in a sanctioned event against players with higher ratings, and you win, that means your rating will increase at a faster rate than playing and winning against players with lower ratings.

If you are interested in learning more about UTPR ratings, here is a video (not required).




UTPR Ratings reality

There are some serious issues with the USAP ratings system. First, UTPR only changes when a player plays in a sanctioned tournament. There aren't that many sanctioned tournaments to compete in, so ratings tend to stagnate unless a player is willing to travel to compete.

Also, the current formula that is used to calculate ratings only takes into account the ratings of the players you are competing against and whether the match you played was a win or a loss. Why is that a problem? This is a problem because it ignores the vast difference between a game with a score of 11-0 and a game that ended 11-9 or 12-10, etc. It ignores matches where the games were close and where the losing team forced the winning team to three games in a best of three games to 11 format.

USAP ratings are slow to update, there are few opportunities, and the formula they use lacks subtlety and important data. Because of this, players who competed in their first tournament as a 3.0 or 3.5 may not play another sanctioned tournament for a year or more. Their USAP rating doesn't move in that time, but if they are practicing and drilling and improving their game, their real world skill level is increasing. Tournament directors don't necessarily know the players who register for their tournaments, especially for large regional tournaments. And sanctioned tournaments are expected to go by the player's 

These issues are not a secret. Several alternative ratings systems have been developed by private companies to fill in the void while USAP gets their [system] together. PickleballTournaments.com has a separate ratings system that tracks play in all tournaments, sanctioned or not. PickleballBrackets.com developed a ratings system that takes data from leagues and tournaments in their system. When players have competed in the Pickleball Brackets system for a while, their algorithm can predict match outcomes to within a few points. That's impressive and indicative of precision ratings that truly represent the skill levels of players.

Both of those alternative systems depend on your participation in organized competition. The PickleballTournaments.com rating system only tracks tournament play, and only tournament play that is managed in their system. There are a lot of tournaments that are managed in their system, so odds are, if you have played in tournaments, you have competed in a tournament that was managed in PickleballTournaments.com. I believe their ratings system is also more refined (evaluating score outcomes, not just wins and losses) than USAP's UTPR system. PickleballBrackets.com is a relative newcomer in the tournament and league management software ecosystem, but I am impressed with what I have seen so far. Pickleball Brackets also offers league management and their ratings system pulls from that data as well. If you are considering managing a league for your local players, look into Pickleball Brackets.

One thing that none of these other systems offer is a means of calculating your rating before and between organized play in tournaments or leagues. What about rec play?

DUPR

DUPR stands for "Dreamland Universal Pickleball Rating". It was developed by Dreamland Pickleball. DUPR is the official ratings engine behind the PPA pro pickleball tour. Their ratings formula uses score outcomes in games like the other newer ratings systems. Some tournaments will be submitting their results to DUPR to impact players' DUPR ratings. DUPR renders ratings for singles and doubles. It does not distinguish between gender doubles and mixed doubles. However, the thing about DUPR that makes it unique among the other ratings systems is that it allows players to register results from rec games.

DUPR has a free mobile app that you can download on your phone to create a profile. There are paid features, but the basic user account is free, and everything I am about to outline here is free account functionality. Setting up an account only takes a few minutes once you download the app. To register games in DUPR that count toward ratings
  1. All players involved must have a DUPR account
  2. All players must agree to log the results
  3. All players must verify the results
I used DUPR for a series of rec games for the first time last night. It was fun and it was fairly easy to use.

Okay, but why David?
  • Playing games against more diverse players in rec games can give you a better idea of where you stand relative to other players before you compete in tournaments
    • If you get plastered by 4.0 players, you're probably not going to be competitive in a 4.0 bracket
    • If you easily beat 3.5 players in rec games, you probably want to play up
  • Having a better indication of your rating can help you decide what skill level you can compete in for tournaments and leagues
  • The more data you put into DUPR, the better representation of your real skill level it will be
  • Playing games where you have some skin in the outcome can help you acclimate to competition.
    • This can help reduce nerves when you play in tournaments and league games
  • It's a great way to spice up rec play
It can be a little sad to see your rating go down. My rating dipped after the games I played last night. I wasn't playing my best, and some of the players I was competing with have ratings that are lower than they should be. Next time we play, things might go differently. In the meantime, everyone who played and registered their games will have shifted their DUPR rating. The more we do this, and the more people who also get involved, the more data this system will have and the ratings will become a more accurate representation of our true skill level.

This is cool. Give it a try. Eventually, I would love to see a set of courts designated for DUPR games at our local courts.

The future of ratings

I expect that for the foreseeable future, we're going to all have various ratings in various systems and different tournaments are going to pay attention to the one they have selected as the important rating for their purposes. It's probably going to be a little confusing. That is unfortunate, but pickleball is a relatively young sport compared to a sport like tennis or golf. It may take time to get pickleball ratings systems ironed out.

I am hopeful that USAP will fix the issues with their system. I know that they are aware of the shortcomings of their ratings system and they are working to find solutions.


Support for USA Pickleball

If USA Pickleball has all these problems with their ratings systems, why be a member?

I am a USA Pickleball member and I would urge you to be one as well. Pickleball needs a strong central governing authority so our rules are consistent. No organization is perfect, but not having an authority that dictates rules for the sport makes things messy and confusing for new players, confusing for players who compete at locations that may not be adhering to the official rules, and it makes things confusing for the public. If you want more and better venues to play and compete in, we need to continue to grow the sport so investors and governments maintain an interest in funding projects and sponsoring events. When the rules get muddled, people lose interest because they don't understand what is going on. That is bad for pickleball.

Another reason to be a member is that you cannot play in sanctioned tournaments if you are not an active member of USA Pickleball. That means you won't have an official rating with the governing body of the sport, or that your official rating will not move at all. It also means that you will not be able to compete in regional events, majors that qualify players for Nationals, nor will you make it to Nationals tournaments. You don't have to be an all-star player to compete in those tournaments.

It takes some commitment to compete in those events right now because we lack sanctioned tournaments here in Arkansas. Right now, you have to travel to surrounding states to compete in sanctioned events. I am hopeful that we will see some fully sanctioned events hosted here in Arkansas in the future, but there is work to do before we can do that.


I hope you found this information useful and I hope some of you will consider trying out DUPR. Maybe we can play some DUPR games together.

Thanks for stopping by,
David


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