In the ITF’s own words, “The ITF World Tennis Number provides a single global tennis rating for players of all ages, genders, and abilities.” According to a USTA Informational Page on the new rating, the organization has integrated the WTN into Serve Tennis as an aid for tournament directors and providers. The Use Cases listed in that flyer explicitly include seeding, selection, grouping, flighting and conducting banded events.
That suggests that the USTA has big plans for integrating WTN into tournament play. Additionally, the pure enthusiasm of the official USTA messaging implies that significant impact is anticipated. However, a couple of bullet points later in that same document, the USTA emphasizes that there are no plans to abandon USTA rankings for either Junior or Adult tournaments.
Will WTN be replacing USTA rankings or NTRP? There are no plans to do this. USTA rankings will continue to guide seeding and selection for USTA junior and adult tournaments, while NTRP will remain the foundation of the USTA League program.
Excerpt from “Top 10 Things to Know”
This weekend I am exploring how WTN might serve as an effective conduit to transition and retain aging Juniors into the Adult tennis ecosystem. Tournaments are the logical place to start since that is the dominant form of competition for Junior tennis. One very obvious way to retain those players is to offer a familiar set of streamlined playing choices that is identical or closely analogous to their Junior competitive experience.
If flighted WTN tournaments became common for Junior Tennis, then the same product offered for Adults could support a seamless transition. Another alternative would be to start offering WTN flighted Under 21 divisions (similar to soccer) as a part of the Junior tennis ecosystem. That could serve as an intermediary way to keep aging Juniors engaged in the sport just a little longer.
Unfortunately for that to work, WTN tournaments would have to be a significant part of both the Adult and Junior tournament systems. At the present time WTN is positioned as an additional piece of competitive performance data hanging out at the side of the existing implementation.
The Adult and Junior tournament regulations and ranking systems are vastly different documents even though there has been an attempt to present them as “unified.” “Surprising? Differences in a ‘Unified’ System” breaks that down. For anyone who wants to go deep down that rabbit trail “Adult and Junior Tournaments: Distant Cousins in the USTA Family Tree” describes the underlying organizational reasons why the Adult and Junior competition committees work largely independently of each other.
The simple fact of the matter is that WTN will have a profound effect on playing decisions at the Junior level even in the absence of any changes to the Junior USTA ranking system. In fact, WTN will be identical to the effect that UTR was already having on how players approached playing decisions previous to the rollout of WTN.
It is befuddling that the USTA would invest in WTN and not use that new rating to transform tournament tennis for both Juniors and Adults. In fact, I don’t think that it is possible to maintain the status quo over the long term.
I hope there is a better master plan than what has been revealed so far.
- Intercollegiate Tennis Association Adopts ITF World Tennis Number as Exclusive Official Rating for College Tennis, ITA News Release, January 5, 2023.
- ITA x ITF World Tennis Number Coach Webinar, YouTube Unlisted Video, Recorded January 17, 2023.
- USTA launches ITF World Tennis Number in United States, ITF World Tennis Number Webpage, June 16, 2022.
- Top 10 Things to Know, ITF World Tennis Number Informational Page hosted by the USTA, viewed March 16, 2023.
