The Insidious Plateau

The National Tennis Rating Program (NTRP) is a categorization system originally designed to support competitive play for USTA Leagues. In fact, the creation of the NTRP system is rightly credited with fueling a tennis boom in the United States. It replaced the (somewhat) subjective “A, B, C” system that was previously used at the local level. USTA League, as enabled by the NTRP system, initially had an extremely positive effect on the tennis ecosystem, as evidenced by the explosive growth in participation.

Before the NTRP National League system emerged, an “A/B/C” system was most commonly used to implement local progressive league play. Tournaments were the dominant form of higher-level adult competition. “Open” tournaments were supplemented with age divisions as competitive leveling mechanisms for both Juniors and Adults. There was also a smattering of “A/B/C” tournaments, but those local events did not feed into a progressive competitive pathway.

While a few players were happy to consistently win at the “B” and “C” levels, Adult players usually tried to improve their competitive mastery to move up. An “A” player who was at the top of the competitive hierarchy at their local club would frequently enter Open tournaments seeking stronger competition. This culture of consistently striving to improve would lead some players to seek competition at the National and International levels. In other words, the progressive competitive pathway was in place for Open level tennis.

When USTA League play was first introduced, I am sure it was assumed that the player population would continue to strive for higher and higher levels of mastery. Unfortunately, the organization also implemented something at the onset that incentivized players to behave differently. That innovation started the sequence of events that has ultimately led to the erosion of the top tiers from the competitive landscape.

I am talking about USTA League National Championships for each NTRP level.

From the earliest days of USTA League implementation, the organization self-imposed a yearly requirement to conduct National Championships. Additionally, each Section was directed to hold a Sectional Championship to determine advancement to the National Championships.

There are justifiable reasons why the NTRP National Championships were initially beneficial to the tennis ecosystem. The event created the matches between players from each Section necessary to calibrate a consistent National ratings system. Otherwise, divergence in actual performance levels from Section to Section will inevitably develop over time. National Championships also generated player enthusiasm as USTA League was first getting started. In fact, potential advancement to Nationals is still one of the primary USTA League marketing selling points.

The expectation that the playing community would continue to strive to reach higher and higher competitive levels didn’t pan out. The playing population has largely been consumed by a desire to compete for teams that advance to the Sectional and National Championships. An effective way for players to do that is to keep their NTRP rating right below the demarcation line between levels.

That player behavior creates a broad population plateau at the top of each NTRP level. Furthermore, those players have seemingly internalized the idea that the highest level where they consistently win is their “correct” NTRP level. If they get bumped up, it inspires the belief that the NTRP computer made a mistake.

It can be challenging for players who are promoted to the next level. In the case where there are enough players and teams, another plateaued player population loiters at the top of the next tier. Those teams are trying to win their local leagues to advance to Sectionals and, ideally, also Nationals. It is sometimes hard for a promoted player to land on a roster and even harder to get match play. That is a powerful incentive for individual players to avoid promotion altogether.

However, sometimes when a player is promoted, their local area does not have enough people to support teams. If the ecosystem was healthy, tournaments would continue to provide a competitive outlet for those players. Unfortunately, there is a gaping void in the competitive framework. That is also a powerful incentive to avoid getting bumped up for individuals.

From a practical standpoint, USTA League will always lose viability at the upper echelons because there isn’t an infinite pool of players, and we cannot all play like Iga Świątek. The physics of tennis performance dictates that the number of elite players dwindles at the top. USTA League peters out at 5.0, and it is gone at 5.5.

That means that players who are playing at those levels effectively do not have USTA League play as an option. Theoretically, there should be tournaments for those players to engage in, but that is a dead zone in the ecosystem. The lack of players competing at that level is exacerbated by the fact that the population at NTRP 4.5 is actively trying to stay right there.

USTA Adult Tennis desperately needs a comprehensive competitive pathway that incentivizes players to reach the highest levels of competitive mastery possible. That will necessarily require building a progressive tournament system that extends all the way up to the thin population of players who are vying for spots on the National and International Cup teams.

Unfortunately, the playing population who should be fueling local grassroots-level tournaments is trapped in a USTA League system that incentivizes them in the wrong ways. It encourages those players to stagnate their performance level. It dominates their calendars. For tournaments to become viable, USTA League has to understand its impact on the tennis ecosystem and embrace some changes. Realistically, that isn’t going to happen unless it comes top-down from the USTA.