Texas Understood the Assignment: The Rankings Matter

Fiend at Court Unplugged

There is significant space for misunderstanding and misinterpreting communication in an emotionally charged atmosphere. I suspect that the person at USTA National who is processing the feedback is bewildered and maybe even a little put off at the passion exhibited by the Texas Tournament players regarding the sanctity of tournament points and rankings lists. The margin between venting frustration and providing well-constructed feedback is razor thin.

I believe that the primary motivation when the USTA created the NTRP National Championships was to incentivize NTRP tournament participation at the section and local levels. That means that the USTA wants its membership to respond by playing a lot of tournaments. It is simply not possible for that to occur without the playing community also becoming highly sensitized about points and rankings. It is not realistic to expect people to chase NTRP National Championship endorsements and simultaneously not care about tournaments points and rankings.

When the NTRP National Championships were unveiled, players in the Texas Section were already well versed and primed for the rankings chase. For players competing for the 8 spots in each division at the Texas Masters, the fact that 3 spots were open for NTRP Nationals simply created a new tier of achievement.

In other words, Texas understood the assignment.

I sincerely hope that the USTA appreciates and understands that the frustration expressed by the tournament players in Texas over the points awarded at the Masters is because they are responding to the incentive of NTRP Nationals exactly the way the USTA hoped that they would. They care. Passionately.

La Jolla – When a Level 1 is So Much More

The 2021 Texas Masters is not an isolated event. Many other USTA tournaments have been played this calendar year using round robin preliminary groups that feed into a championship bracket. The Women’s 50 doubles division and the corresponding ranking points awarded from the “Level 1 USTA National Women’s 50, 60, 70, 80, 90 Hard Courts” is a good illustration of that point. For the sake of brevity, I’m going to just refer to that tournament as “La Jolla” from here on out.

Texas Player Gayle Prejean came in third at the tournament, partnering with another Texan, Vicki Buholz. For her efforts at that tournament, Gayle was awarded an astonishing 3810 rankings points. If you are wondering about the astonishing part, the maximum points a player can earn for a Level 1 tournament is 3000 ranking points plus 30 participation points. In other words, the new USTA software awarded Gayle with 780 more points than the maximum possible for winning it all.

It is a result of an obvious structural issue in the USTA digital platform. Gayle received points for the preliminary consolation rounds AND the championship bracket as if they were two separate tournaments. If the tournament had been fully bracketed, or if an “Order of Finish” approach was used for the rankings points, 1800 plus 30 participation points should have been awarded for the 3rd place finish.

Reconciling La Jolla with the USTA Points Table Standard

The tournament format used in La Jolla aligns precisely with one of the Round Robin tables in the “2021 USTA Adult Tournaments Ranking System,” specifically the “Tournaments With Round Robin Preliminary Rounds & SE Draw of 8 Playoff.” That means that unlike the Texas Masters, there is a definitive source for what the points should have been. No interpretation or extrapolation is required.

Gayle and Vicki went 3-0 in their preliminary Round Robin pool. Each of those matches was worth 231 points. So they should have been awarded 693 points for their pool play. They won their first round of the 8 team SE draw which was worth 762 points. The 3rd place match should have netted them an additional 231 points. That should give them a grand total of 1686 plus 30 participation points.

Another Texas player in that same bracket at La Jolla was Shelly Works. Shelly and her doubles partner Rainy Miller lost both their Round Robin pool matches and were placed into a second chance back draw. They were awarded 1500 points for a single win in that bracket. 1500 points is what the 4th place finisher in the main draw logically should have received.

Ugghhh….

I started in on this exercise to determine what points schedules the USTA used for tournaments played under the preliminary Round Robin format earlier in the year. What I found was that rankings points awarded… didn’t align with any of the USTA published rankings tables.

The point I was originally planning on making when examining La Jolla is how hard it would be for the USTA to retroactively change the rankings tables and apply them to tournaments played earlier in the year. Instead I found that the rankings points awarded for La Jolla were not in compliance any published point schedules. The official engineering term for this starts with “cluster.”

NTRP Nationals: The Crown Jewel of Manual Overrides

Another prominent tournament with a preliminary round robin followed by a bracketed championship is the NTRP National Championships. As a USTA marquis event, if any tournament got it right, it should be the NTRP National Championship, right?

I am going to use another Texan, Christy Vutam, as the case example for that tournament. The NTRP Nationals had six preliminary round robin pools that fed into an 8 person championship bracket. Because there were only 6 round robin groups, there were a couple of byes in the championship playoff bracket.

Christy swept the three matches she played in the round robin stage. In the level 1 NTRP tournament she should have received 231 points for each round and a total of 693 points for that stage. In the playoff bracket, she received one of the byes. The point schedule awards 762 points per championship draw win. In other words, Christy could not max out her points for this event due to that bye. (That is a another problem with the 2021 points table.) Her semi-final match followed by a loss in the finals garnered her an additional 762 points.

According to the official “2021 USTA Adult Tournaments Ranking System,” Christy should have received 1455 points for her performance plus 30 for participation. In fact, that is precisely what she was awarded according to her filtered ranking totals. However, if you look at her tournament results without filtering just for her singles ranking, a completely different point total is reflected.

This provides some insight into how the ranking system processes the tournament data. It seems clear that a manual override of the rankings point total was performed for the NTRP National Championships. On the good side, those adjustments aligned with the “2021 USTA Adult Tournaments Ranking System” table applicable for the event.

As an editorial aside, I have previously observed that there are red flags all over the place suggestive that the challenges with the new USTA tournament software system are rooted within the underlying data architecture. This is another to add to that list. An experienced database analyst would be horrified at the two screen captures above.

The Texas Masters and the Big Picture

Bear with me for a moment while I drone on about the systems engineering lifecycle model. It starts with a requirements specification from which the system architecture and design is created. That architecture and design is translated to software during the implementation phase. Testing is performed prior to operational use. That is how orderly development of large systems is supposed to be structured.

The Points Tables in the “2021 USTA Adult Tournaments Ranking System” are a reflection of the Requirements. Those point tables have some issues that need to be addressed for the reason outlined in yesterday’s post: The draw format of a tournament should not materially alter the rankings point allocation for the players.

There is evidence in the published rankings list that the Architecture and Implementation of the tournament software system is not in alignment with the Requirements in the “2021 USTA Adult Tournaments Ranking System” tables. It is a separate issue, but one which exacerbates the challenge associated with updating the rankings point tables.

There is evidence in the published rankings list that “rankings corrections” have been made to the system. Additionally, that those changes were manually entered on an individual basis rather that fixing the underlying data architecture.

The challenge the USTA is facing is significantly broader and deeper than just the Texas Masters tournament. That is why the Texas Tournament Facebook page is full of complaints over point discrepancies and inconsistencies in the rankings points which span the entirety of 2021.

Triage and Prioritization

There is a lot of player focus on individual rankings points and inequities from tournament to tournament reflected in the current rankings lists. What is important to understand that all of those examples are symptoms of the underlying issues rather than the actual problem. “Resolving” the issues with a series of manual overrides simultaneously masks the root cause and actually makes it worse.

I have no insight into what is going on at the USTA other than through the narrow lens of what has been published in the rankings tables. Like everybody else who cares passionately about the sanctity of the rankings lists, I have some thoughts and ideas on how to triage the actions that lead to an ultimate solution.

1. The USTA Adult Competition Committee needs to update the National Rankings Point system for 2022 to repair the flaws in the tables originally published for 2021. (That is the topic of my planned post tomorrow.)
2. The USTA Adult Competition Committee has to make a decision whether to stick with the original tables for 2021 or to retroactively apply the 2022 tables back to 2021. No matter decision is taken, it will impact who gets the endorsements for the NTRP National Championships. Some people will be unhappy and it is unavoidable.
3. A Rankings List for 2021 needs to be created that fully aligns with the point schedules in the tables that were selected in #2. Since the software system is demonstrably unable to produce consistent results, someone is probably going to have to create the rankings lists manually at the end of the year. The USTA should be making plans and preparations for that to occur.
4. The USTA digital platform has to be updated so that the rankings calculations are a faithful and accurate translation of the points schedules officially specified by the USTA. Based on the publicly observable evidence, there is no quick solution to foundational issues.

The Rankings Matter

While this post was framed out in the context of the impacts on NTRP Nationals, there is actually a lot more at stake. At the highest levels of adult tournament competition, the rankings list is highly influential in who gets selected for Intersectional Teams as well as the teams that the USTA sends to international competitions. It also impacts seeding at National Level 1 tournaments.

The Rankings matter — a lot — in the system that the USTA created. The USTA needs to understand that it is good that the players care. Passionately.

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1. 2021 USTA Adult Tournaments Ranking System, USTA Web Hosted Document, viewed 11/11/2021.