A couple of Texas players in my close orbit have already played an out-of-section Level 5 tournament in 2023. I know that because they didn’t receive the rankings points expected for winning the event. I received additional queries after the “Level 5 Open: 2023 CATA Polar Bear Adult Doubles” that was also recently completed. Explaining USTA rankings points allocations is apparently now my primary unpaid side hustle. However, what I uncovered is a mystery.
The tournament that originally alerted me to this situation was the “Level 5 Open: The Greens ‘INFANT CRISIS SERVICES’ Open” which was held in Oklahoma City on January 6-8. The winners of that tournament received 750 ranking points plus 6 participation points. Both numbers were less than expected based on what was awarded for Level 5 tournaments in 2022.
There are two potential explanations for the discrepancy. It is possible that the USTA has updated the rankings point allocation tables for 2023 but has yet to effectively communicate that to the tournament community. The alternate explanation is that the tournament ranking software has suddenly started making calculation errors.
Exploring the USTA Adult Tournament Ranking System Tables
When I google “USTA Adult Tournament Ranking System” the first item returned in the query is the version of the document listed as reference 1 below. That particular document is marked as updated in February 2022. In that resource, winning a Level 5 tournament is worth 1050 ranking points and 11 participation points. That is different from the 750 and 6 that were awarded at The Greens tournament.
Rather than relying on google, I then looked for the document by drilling down from the top level of the USTA website. Paradoxically, the only way I could navigate to the “PLAY TENNIS: USTA ADULT TOURNAMENTS” page was by blocking my location in a private/incognito tab. When I allow the USTA to use my location, it funnels me directly to the tournament registration page.
The “PLAY TENNIS: USTA ADULT TOURNAMENTS” page contains a “click here” under the “Tournament Structure” heading that navigates to the Adult Tournament Ranking System document. That location is illustrated in the image below. (If you don’t see a picture, your browser or email is blocking it.)
The version of the document returned by clicking on that link takes users to the same place as the first item returned by my google query. That is also listed as reference 1 at the end of this post. However, things get more interesting on that very same page. Further down there is a second link to the tournament ranking system document.
That link navigates to a completely different version, which is listed as the second reference at the end of this post. Regardless of the provenance, both versions of the rankings system documents linked from that page agree that the winner of a Level 5 tournament receives 1050 ranking points and 11 participation points.
Backing up a couple of clicks, I could have bypassed the “PLAY TENNIS: USTA ADULT TOURNAMENTS” page and instead opted to navigate directly to “ADULT TOURNAMENT RANKINGS“. The link to the 2022 Ranking System document on that page returns the green/gold version listed as reference 2 below.
I have no idea which version of the document is currently authoritative, but this is a prime example of why I believe that the USTA has some Configuration Management issues that need to be addressed. The organization has to find a way to make it easy for users to access the current policy and regulation documents. The collective web pages should not point to different versions. The fact that my example outlined here has a page that points to two different versions of the same document is just icing on the cake.
As an additional data point, at the end of 2022, I sent an email to USTA Texas notifying them that a link on a USTA Texas maintained webpage was pointing to an out-of-date version of the adult ranking system document. That page has subsequently been updated and now navigates to the green/gold version in reference #2 below.
I am starting to suspect that reference #2 might be the current authoritative version.
Finishing Shots
I used my very best open-source data collection skills and was unable to find a version of the USTA Adult Tournament Ranking System document that reduces the points for winning a Level 5 tournament or changes participation points for 2023. I did a spot check on other Level 5 tournaments that have been conducted to date and determined that the software calculates rankings points consistently, albeit at the unpublished reduced level.
This does not move me further toward understanding the cause of the sudden change. It is still possible that the USTA has updated the rankings point allocation tables for 2023 and has failed to effectively communicate that to the tournament community. However, if that were the case, then I would expect to find at least a draft of the document lying around on some public-facing shared drive. I failed to do that.
The alternate possibility is that the tournament software has suddenly started making calculation errors. That would be profoundly disappointing after all the progress made last year.
- USTA Adult Tournaments Ranking System, USTA Resource, as of February 1, 2022, downloaded September 30, 2022.
- 2022 USTA Adult Tournaments Ranking System, USTA Resource, undated document, downloaded January 26, 2022.
The USTA website is a mess. There are lots of out-of-date links and documents. Even logging onto the site is fraught with issues.
Using the search within the website brings up lots of irrelevant and out of date matches presented in a way that makes them seem current. Whenever a new document is produced the previous version should be marked as superseded. It is a huge problem.