Why Use UTR?

In 1789, most countries, and even different cities, used local, unique systems of measurement. It was a complete hodgepodge that blocked trade and stymied communication, inevitably producing conflicts. Even a word like pint or gallon could mean different things in different places. A few nations realized that a single, reliable standard of measures would grease the wheels of trade across borders, but vested interests that profited from the incompatible units opposed standardization. In France, drastic differences in the size of measurements were actually a factor in precipitating the French Revolution. Shortly post-Revolution, the new French government sponsored the first version of the decimal-based metric system, now used virtually everywhere in the world. The metric system has had incalculable impact. It has enabled many aspects of international trade and communication, as well as global cooperation among scientists and health care specialists, to cite just two examples. In some ways, tennis today resembles pre-Revolutionary France. The sport is trying to cope with a confusion of more than 2,700 different ranking and rating systems deployed around the world—an athletic Tower of Babel that obstructs the growth and development of the game. Luckily, in recent years, a tennis equivalent of the metric system has emerged. This is Universal Tennis Rating (UTR), the world’s most accurate and reliable method of rating the skill of tennis players. Its 16-point scale applies to all ages, genders, and ability levels, and works for everyone on every court, worldwide.

What is UTR? A brief explanation of the world’s most accurate index of tennis skill.

Just as the metric system profoundly accelerated the growth of science and commerce, UTR has the power to speed up and boost player development in a highly efficient way. Any national federation can submit its sanctioned results to UTR at no cost, and in return receive many important advantages, especially regarding player development and competition. Strong, closely matched competition has always been the best engine for cultivating skill in tennis. UTR became the sport’s “gold standard” because it is by far the most accurate and precise index of playing level. Its 16-point scale computes player ratings to two decimal places (e.g., 12.71). Unlike nearly all prevailing systems, UTR bases its ratings on head-to-head results. Its algorithm uses only two data points: your opponent’s rating, and the score in games. Consequently, UTR can effortlessly orchestrate level-based play: competition between evenly matched players. This capacity makes it the most powerful technology available to federations, tournaments, coaches, and players for cultivating skill in competitive tennis. Tournament directors, for example, can use UTR to construct highly competitive draws that bring together well-matched athletes. UTR can greatly improve seeding, as well. As a bonus, UTR accomplishes all this with far less toil and expense than current methods that depend on inconsistent and unreliable ranking systems. UTR helps retain players, keeping them in the game by giving them good matches, whatever their level may be. It avoids those 6-0, 6-1 mismatches that drive people away from tennis, frequently very early in their careers. UTR helps college tennis coaches and a global pool of junior athletes find each other, greatly facilitating the recruiting process by introducing a trustworthy worldwide yardstick.

UTR Players: Who Are They?

For federations, UTR’s global database (more than 5 million results to date) and historical tracking can generate invaluable player development data that is far more useful than “siloed” information from the home nation alone. Resulting efficiencies of scale may help federations cope with shrinking budgets. Furthermore, UTR offers advanced analytic tools to federations that pare down the costs of technology development—including the costs of disengagement when proprietary tools get outdated. These analytics can, for example, assess how effective a federation’s current competitive structures are, and can generate ideas for newer, better frameworks. Since UTR’s global network connects all players regardless of their demographic categories, it stimulates play between juniors and adults, males and females, recreational and tournament players. This vastly increases the pool of potential competitors within and across federations. It allows strong players to find challenging matches locally, saving huge sums of money now spent on needless travel “chasing points” in ranking schemes. UTR gives federations, tournaments, coaches, and tennis-club hackers alike a reliable way to put the right people on the court together. Once that happens, the game is mostly won, even before the spin of the racquet. At no cost, federations can convey their sanctioned results to UTR, and reap these abundant rewards. Learn more here.