Universal Tennis Rating (UTR) — What is it?

In recent years, Universal Tennis Ratings (UTR) have emerged as the “metric system” of tennis, worldwide. UTR rates every competitive tennis player—regardless of age, gender, or nationality—on a 16-point scale with two decimal places. It is by far the most accurate and reliable index of tennis skill available to players, coaches, tournaments, and federations. Nearly all current ranking systems assign points to athletes based on what tournament round they reach, regardless of whom they played to reach it. In contrast, UTR’s rating system bases its calculations on head-to-head results. For each match, its algorithm uses only two data points: who did you play, and what was the score? Thirty matches in the UTR system will generate a highly reliable rating. Since UTS’s algorithm calculates this rating from actual set scores in games, it’s far more precise than computations based solely on won/lost results. Furthermore, UTR is a truly international system that gathers data and rates players from more than 200 nations. The idiosyncrasies of various national procedures do not limit or influence UTR; it is therefore the most inclusive, complete, global system for rating tennis skill. Therefore, UTRs can facilitate level-based play between opponents of similar ability, worldwide. This produces a far greater proportion of competitive tennis matches (defined by UTR as those decided by a score of 6-3, 6-4 or closer). Such even matches have many advantages; they increase enjoyment for both athletes and spectators, and are the most powerful engine for player development. UTR’s database now includes more than 5 million results from 202 countries. All ATP and WTA professionals, all college tennis players, and many competitive junior, high school, and adult athletes have UTRs. The United States Tennis Association, the Lawn Tennis Association of Great Britain, Tennis Australia, Tennis Canada, and the Brazilian Tennis Confederation are among the national federations whose competitive results are included in the UTR system. UTR is also the official rating system of the Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA). Its influence on the game of tennis is growing daily, worldwide.