Changes Made to GLTA Ranking system

By GLTA Staff

In response to feedback on the GLTA rating system, the GLTA Board has instituted a new rating system. The new system works in the same general way as the old system: you earn points at each tournament, and your rating is equal to the total number of points earned divided by the number of tournaments you have played (over a two-year period). As before, ratings are kept separately for Singles, Doubles and Mixed. While Singles and Doubles ratings are binding on all tournaments for level placement, Mixed ratings are only for use as "other information" for determining a player's level and/or seeding. Each player's Doubles rating is used to determine his/her Minimum Required Level of Play in Mixed events. The primary (legitimate) complaint about the old system was that a player got promoted if he won three rounds in his first tournament, even if this meant that he lost in the quarterfinals. This will not happen under the new system. The new system places a higher emphasis on wins in later rounds (quarterfinals, semifinals, and finals) than the old system did. Also, the new system has a factor-of-10 between points awarded at various levels (A vs. B, etc) instead of the old factor-of-5, which should mean that a player who wins a B event will subsequently be required to play A, but will not be seeded in A. (Previously, winning a B event frequently got you seeded in A.)

The new system maintains (actually improves upon) the goal of being simple. For early rounds, points awarded are always a round number (10 for D, 100 for C, 1000 for A, 10,000 for Open) and for later rounds the award is double or triple that. We hope that every player leaving every tournament will be able to calculate his/her new rating without having to wait for the GLTA to publish the new ratings.

All matches in Round Robin play will be awarded early-round points. This will avoid a past problem of over-rewarding winners of Round Robin events.  In the new system, players get "double points" for winning quarterfinals matches. In small events, where the quarterfinal round is the first round of the event, players may feel "over-rewarded" for these wins, and may feel that they are being kept at a higher level because of this "doubling" factor. We recognize this as a weakness (hopefully, the only weakness) of the new system. Therefore, we encourage anyone who feels "screwed" by this feature to appeal his/her rating if he/she wants to move down a level.

We welcome feedback on the new rating system. We hope that the vast majority of you will find it to be an improvement over the old system.  Please visit www.glta.net for more information or to give feedback.

 

The March 2003 Newsletter of Tennis4All

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