The world of tennis has been rapidly adopting the
UTR Powered Events tournament platform. Its use has increased from roughly 100 contests in 2016 to over 900 by the end of this year, as noted in
UTR Powered Events—What Are They? These competitions make use of the
Universal Tennis Rating in one or more ways, such as selecting entrants, sorting players into flights, and seeding draws.
There’s a reason for the exploding popularity—several reasons, in fact. UTR Powered Events offer distinct advantages to tournament directors, sponsors, and participants. The tennis world is discovering how UTR Powered Events improve life both on and off the court. Here are three of the key benefits.
“The platform allows you to design the event in a way that will best serve your intended segment of players.”
1. First, the UTR Powered Events platform offers a great deal of flexibility in structuring exactly the kind of tournament you want to run. “The platform allows you to design the event in a way that will best serve your intended segment of players,” says Randy Jenks, UTR’s director of events. “Not every event, for example, needs ‘blanket coverage’ that will include every player in the region. Sometimes you may want to target a very pointed segment. Other times, you’ll want to widen the scope a bit.” The UTR Powered Events platform lets organizers construct their tourney considering who it is for, what format of competition is best, and how many matches players will have, for example.
UTR Powered Events let tournaments customize their formats for specific purposes. If, for example, you want to focus on conditioning for competitive players, you might conduct a best-of-three-set, regular scoring singles tourney. On the other hand, if your target segment is recreational adults, perhaps you’ll choose a format that results in shorter matches. Facilities also factor in. Suppose your club has four courts open on a Saturday afternoon. You cannot run a tournament for 300 players — but you might run a very successful round-robin UTR Powered Event for eight players.
A
quick guide to a fast-growing trend in tennis tournaments.
“The UTR Powered Events system provides tools to accept online registration and payment,” Jenks adds. “And other tools to create draws and enter scores.”
2. Given the rapid growth of UTR’s presence in tennis competition, another major benefit is that all match scores automatically enter the Universal Tennis database, where each participant will get UTR credit for his or her performance.
3. Last and perhaps best of all, deploying the UTR system for selection of entrants, creating flights, and seeding draws ensure a lot of close, competitive matches. Because UTR is such a sensitive, accurate index of tennis skill, putting it to work in drawing up an event inevitably produces a great deal of
level-based play, which spins off multiple
advantages. It makes for cliffhangers and tight matches that maximize satisfaction for players and spectators. Furthermore, level-based play is widely agreed to be the most powerful driver for developing skill in tennis.
Put the benefits of the UTR Powered Events tournament platform to work for you.
