Back in 2018, the USTA decided that it would be a good idea to create a new age-based NTRP division for tournament play. That new division was for 50+ players. Bifurcating by age did not increase participation in NTRP leveled tournaments, at least not in Texas per my analysis. Perhaps the USTA has more complete data at the national level that tells a different story. In any case, it was later decided that what tournament tennis really needed was three age based divisions. Now tournaments can offer 18+, 40+, and 55+ NTRP divisions.
I have previously outlined several reasons why NTRP age based events are bad for the Adult tournament ecosystem. (Links to those posts are at the bottom of this article for anyone who missed it or would like to refresh their memory.) In addition to those arguments, NTRP age based divisions can also create significant fragmentation in a player’s ranking history. Low registration levels in a tournament forces tournament organizers to consolidate events. Players who enter one division can effectively be forced into an alternate division. When that occurs, per current USTA Regulation, players receive ranking points in the division that was played rather than the one that was actually entered.
That means that players may have to enter many more than six tournaments to max out their tournament cumulative performance ranking if the events that they enter do not routinely attract enough entries to be conducted. That is commonly occurring in both NTRP tournaments as well as age based open Senior tennis.
Low participation can also prompt people into philosophical and moral dilemmas. That inevitably leads to players making decisions that are contrary to the “More Tennis” philosophy embraced by this site. Ultimately that is really bad for tournament tennis.
I tried and failed to come up with a clean way to explain some of the ridiculous situations that are regularly occurring in tournaments. My hypothetical scenario below does not do the topic justice — and that kind of proves my point on how convoluted it is. If the description seems hard to follow, I guarantee that it is even worse as players and the tournament director try to sort it out real time via frantic texts and email messages the night before the draws are supposed to post.
Imagine that I elect to enter an NTRP 4.5 tournament in the 18+ event rather than the 40+ or 55+ divisions that were also an option for me. Additionally let’s say that only one other player enters 18+ who is not eligible for 40+ or 55+. To round out the hypothetical scenario, this tournament also has two players who enter NTRP 4.5 40+ and an additional lone player that enters NTRP 50+.
If confronted with this scenario, I would be reaching out to the tournament director and all the other players lobbying for consolidation into a single 18+ draw. That would be largely self-serving since probably something drove me to enter 18+ in the first place. One possible reason is because I need ranking points or eligibility in that specific division. The best case scenario is that everyone agrees with my proposal.
(To round out this fantasy, the tournament director then also elects to play it out as a 5 player round robin. 3… 2… 1… and I’m awake again.)
Unfortunately, not everyone will agree to consolidation. Their reasons might be driven by ranking points incentives. The lone player who entered 50+ may have entered the tournament explicitly for the purpose of gaining eligibility for NTRP Nationals per the selection criteria in Texas. Alternatively, they may be pursuing a ranking at that age group. Rather than consolidating events, they may simply elect to drop out. It is also possible that the player may agree to drop down to 40+ but refuses to play the 18+ “youngsters.”
The two 40+ players may be faced with similar dilemmas. In fact, if they are on top of the situation, they may also proactively reach out to the tournament director, the player who entered 50+, and (potentially) to me, to argue for a 4 person round robin at 40+. In that case, the rest of the field just effectively screwed over the younger player who no longer has a chance to compete.
It is very unhealthy for tournament tennis to force organizers and players through such a decision process. The root cause problem is low participation. An exacerbating condition is that NTRP age restricted divisional fragmentation of what would otherwise be a minimally viable draw. A player will not continuously enter tournaments if their draw rarely makes or they routinely receive only one match.
One easy solution would be to suspend NTRP age-based divisional play. USTA National is unlikely to take that step any time soon. However, individual Sections could make that decision by only issuing sanctions for 18+ NTRP divisional play. In fact, some tournaments in Texas have intentionally not offered 55+ events because they know that there are not enough players to support it.
Currently the primary selection criteria in Texas for NTRP National endorsements is position on the rankings lists. If NTRP age group divisions were eliminated, Texas could simply have players apply for the events they are willing to attend and then make the selection straight down the 18+ ranking list.
There is another powerful reason why a Section like Texas might want to consider taking that step. During the first year of NTRP Nationals, players from Texas dominated play almost across the board. Currently Texas still does well, but nowhere near the levels of success that players from that Section experienced initially. I think the reason for that is because NTRP divisional fragmentation means that players aren’t getting nearly as many tournament matches under their belts. You need to be tournament tough to win a national championship.
Many players in Texas will agree with the statement that the Texas Master’s has lost some of the luster. The reason for that is that it is no longer much of an achievement to “make it” to the Masters due to the excessive divisional fragmentation. Eliminating age based divisional play is a quick fix to that problem.
However, there is one situation where I think NTRP 55+ (and maybe 40+) divisions make a lot of sense. It is in conjunction with tournaments that are traditionally exclusively Senior age-based open events. There will undoubtedly be an expanded post breaking that idea down in detail in the near future.
- How Fragmentation Hurts Tournaments. NTRP age-based division incentivizes players to delay entry into tournaments.
- How NTRP Tournament Fragmentation Hurts 18+ Players. Younger age divisions are less likely to attract enough participants for the event to be conducted when participation levels are low.
- Draw Fragmentation Equals Less Tennis. Why age restricted divisions result in significantly less tennis being played.
- USTA Adult Tournaments Ranking System, as of February 2022, viewed April 29, 2022.
- USTA Adult and Family Tournament, Ranking, & Sanctioning Regulations, Amended December 2020, viewed April 29, 2022.
- ITF Seniors Tour 2022 Regulations, International Tennis Federation, effective from May 3, 2022.
Excellent post. The USTA frequently creates more divisions in a money grab to try to get the same players to play in multiple divisions, thus increasing revenue from the same player population. The downside is that this fragmentation occurs as you’ve described, and rather than increasing participation, the quality of the tournament product actually goes down and players become less likely to sign-up going forward.
Similar things have happened with league play adding in more age divisions. While it perhaps gave the USTA a bit of a revenue boost as all those 45 year olds could now play 18+ and 40+ (before they could only play 18+ as they weren’t 50 yet), but it also means some of those 40+ now won’t play 18+. Which has led to 18+ participation shrinking, and overall league participation shrinking.
NTRP is supposed to be age neutral, so it is odd to be creating age divisions on top of it, and is either admitting it isn’t age neutral or a money grab by the USTA. Having the age divisions only promotes players remaining fragmented and not playing each other, and then you get ratings “islands” where player’s ratings can stagnate, which makes the whole NTRP at different ages not being representative a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I love your ideas. I had arrived at the same conclusion that the age group divisions were because League thinks it is a good idea. It had not occurred to me that there might be a drop in participation at 18+ due to the League age divisions. In my area the leagues are run with minimal overlap in the calendar and most players who are eligible for both engage in both.
Your comment prompted me to go back and review the post “USTA NTRP Identity Crisis: Age Tiers” which is highly aligned with your own NTRP observations. (Yes, I am at the age where I have to review my own content to remember what I previously wrote.)
Thanks so much for sharing your perspectives!
Seems UTR and Play Your Court events are better suited to many players since you set your own play dates and ranking is more accurate
I quit USTA tournaments when twice Friday starts became Saturday 1st rounds