By Paul Wachter
The New York Times
December 22, 2012
My best tennis days are behind me, and they were never glorious. I was a middling player for a good Division III program in the mid-1990s, and my most memorable collegiate tennis moment happened off the court. (I once smoked marijuana with a professional player.) My last sanctioned match was several years ago, when I, like thousands of other dreamers, signed up for the nationwide tournament for a single spot in the United States Open qualifiers. I lost in the second round to a high school student.
Tennis wasn’t easy to play when I lived in Manhattan. The private courts were expensive and the seasonal public courts were often inconvenient, so I stuck with basketball and squash. But a few months ago, my wife and I moved to Visalia, Calif. When we joined a gym that had tennis courts, I found myself wanting to play again. I was embraced by the local players, who invited me to join their competitive United States Tennis Association league. All I had to do, they said, was access the U.S.T.A.’s Web site and rate myself a 4.5.
The U.S.T.A. ranks players on a 1-to-7 scale, which covers skill levels ranging from a child holding a first racket to Roger Federer. Most of the tennis-playing public is somewhere in the middle. The last (and only) time I had played in a league was about 10 years ago, when I was living in South Carolina. It was a 5.0 league, and the official ratings guide, the National Tennis Rating Program, stipulates that a 5.0 player can “regularly hit winners or force errors off of short balls and can put away volleys,” and “successfully execute lobs, drop shots, half volleys, overhead smashes, and has good depth and spin on most second serves.” Those were the days.
On the U.S.T.A. Web site, I entered my tennis bona fides honestly. I was planning to rate myself a 4.5, a player who can hit all the shots, just not as dependably as a 5.0. So I was surprised when I reached the final screen and was met with a message that the computer had rated me a 5.0. I could appeal the rating, but it would take several weeks for a decision — too late to join my league. What’s more, if I tried to change my answers, the U.S.T.A. would freeze me at a 5.0 and refuse to hear my appeal.
I wondered: What sort of self-rating system was this? And why didn’t it consider age and rust?
“Age is not a factor in N.T.R.P. ratings,” the U.S.T.A.’s David Schobel, who oversees league tennis, wrote in response to e-mailed questions. “You were awarded the 5.0 because that’s the last rating you played within U.S.T.A. League.”
But what if I had just had double-hip-replacement surgery or lost a couple of fingers in an accident? Although there is a medical appeals process for such situations, Schobel wrote, most players who try to rate themselves at a lower level are sandbagging, or trying to be matched with inferior opponents.
“We found that players sat out and then came in at a lower N.T.R.P. skill level when their level of play hadn’t really gone down,” he wrote.
Players have been fooling the system since the U.S.T.A. introduced the league format in 1980, Schobel added. For several years, the association employed verifiers, who would evaluate players in person. But it wasn’t hard to flub a few backhands and overheads on purpose, and the self-rating system returned in 2003.
I would rather play better players and lose; I would sign up for a 5.5 league if there were one nearby. But the much more common tendency, Schobel wrote, is for players to underrate themselves.
Tennis message boards throughout the land are overflowing with rants and conspiracy theories concerning sandbaggers. While perusing an Arkansas blog, I stumbled across nefarious tactics at the women’s 4.0 state championships in May. With the event tied, 2-2, Little Rock Athletic Club trotted out a ringer, Christie Griffee, who had played Division I tennis at Samford University, graduating in 2007. She won the deciding match, 6-0, 6-0. According to the self-rating system, Griffee should have been rated higher, and ultimately the U.S.T.A. weighed in. Griffee’s wins were voided, and she was bumped to a 5.5, but her team still advanced to the Southern championships.
Griffee’s case was egregious. But how about mine?
“Frankly, we assume most players will assume their current rating once the rust wears off,” Schobel wrote.
It’s a happy thought, but not an accurate one. After all, I’m positive that today I could beat 74-year-old Rod Laver, winner of 11 Grand Slam titles, for the sole reason that I’m half his age. Age, I’m afraid, isn’t just a number.
If the U.S.T.A. declines my appeal, I still have a way to become a 4.5. The U.S.T.A. monitors wins and losses and adjusts rankings accordingly, so if I play and lose enough 5.0 matches, I’ll probably be bumped down. But in Visalia, the highest level of U.S.T.A.-sanctioned play is 4.5. So I face the dispiriting option of having to travel out of my way in search of defeat, when I have discovered, informally, I’m perfectly capable of losing to 4.5 players closer to home.
Paul Wachter founded the news aggregator againstdumb.com.
Michael:
When I self rated I got a rating of 2.0, there was not one question about how you play tennis.
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