This weekend’s series of “Unplugged” posts revisited the rankings points awarded following the “Level 4 Closed: Simply the BEST – 2022 Austin Subaru Texas Adult Masters Championships.” Friday we discussed deviations that result from a reduction of points when there are byes in the Compass draw format. Yesterday primarily focused on the happy news that the USTA has finally fixed an error where players in Round Robins were receiving ranking points for going winless in that format.
Unfortunately, there is still one issue that still needs to be addressed specifically for Round Robins. While the rankings points awarded are consistent with what knowledgeable people agree should happen, it doesn’t match the points schedules in the current USTA Adult Tournament Ranking System policy document.
Yesterday I noted that one event at the 2022 “Level 4 Closed: Simply the BEST – 2022 Austin Subaru Texas Adult Masters Championships” was conducted as a three competitor Round Robin. In the Women’s 5.0 Singles division, the collective player’s records were 2-0, 1-1, and 0-2.
According to the points schedule in the table above excerpted from the USTA Adult Tournament Ranking System policy document, ranking points are awarded based on a points per win system. So at a Level 4 tournament, the player that went 2-0 should have received 900 points. However, the winning player actually received 1500.
1500 is the number of ranking points that winners of every other draw format receive for winning a Level 4 tournament. Consequently, 1500 is the logical number of points that this player should have received. Unfortunately, this is not what the USTA Adult Tournament Ranking System policy document states. While the rankings software allocates points “correctly,” the USTA policy document still needs to be corrected. Presumably, this is in work.
This Round Robin ranking points system exposes the fallacy of using a Points Per Round approach to assign ranking points. The title of the table “Points Per Win” may have been a clumsy attempt to get away from the Points Per Round Approach. Unfortunately, that doesn’t solve the problem.
As demonstrated by the 3-person Round Robin bracket at the 2022 Texas Masters, this table does not allocate the correct number of points for any player that wins a match. This table also does not work for a 4-person Round Robin either, as each player competes in only 3 rounds. The “easy” fix is to add a separate table for each number of players that can potentially participate in a Round Robin event. I would think that should be 3, 4, and 5 at a minimum. That is also an inelegant brute force way to do it.
A more elegant solution would consist of a single table that works for all scenarios. That single table is possible using an Order-Of-Finish method. In fact, how to implement that solution has already been previously documented on this site in “Excuse Me- Your Points-Per-Round is Showing.”
At the time, I ended that particular post with the observation that the USTA Adult Tournaments Ranking System document required correction, and that the software had to be updated to comply with what the regulations say. Since that time the situation has advanced to the state that the software is doing what most people would agree is correct, but the regulations are still wrong.
We’re tantalizingly close to full resolution for this draw format, but still not quite there.
- Level 4 Closed: Simply the BEST – 2022 Austin Subaru Texas Adult Masters Championships, Capatal Area Tennis Association Website, viewed September 26, 2022.
- USTA Adult Tournaments Ranking System, USTA Resource, as of February 1, 2022, downloaded September 30, 2022.
Today’s banner photo is from the 2021 Texas Masters provided courtesy of Pushkar Chhajed.
