How it works

Where your rating comes from.

Every rating here is built from published USTA NorCal results — nothing else. No subscription, no self-reported scores, no guesswork.

The short version

Four things happen to your number.

1. 1It starts at your NTRPYour official USTA rating is the starting point, so you begin where the association already places you.
2. 2Every match nudges itWin and it rises, lose and it falls. Beating someone well above you moves it a lot; beating someone well below barely moves it. A tight three-setter counts differently from a 6-0, 6-0.
3. 3Unknown opponents count lessIf we know little about who you played, that result carries less weight — one match against a stranger can’t swing your number.
4. 4It re-anchors every yearWhen USTA publishes year-end ratings, yours is pulled back toward the official number, so it can’t drift over time.

Does the number mean anything?

Evenly rated is a coin flip. A clear favourite almost always wins.

The test that matters isn’t whether we agree with anyone else — it’s whether the number predicts what happens on court. Across 165,870 NorCal matches, sorted by how far apart the two sides were rated:

53.8%

when ratings are
under 0.05

98.6%

when the gap
is 0.60 or more

That first number is the important one. When two players are rated the same, we call it almost exactly 50-50 — the rating isn’t pretending to know something it doesn’t. From there it climbs smoothly, with no bucket out of order.

Read this honestly: these are the same matches the ratings learned from, so the curve flatters us. The shape is real; the exact heights would be lower on matches we’ve never seen.

What it doesn’t do

Two honest limits.

Combo and mixed don’t move your rating. USTA computes NTRP from adult singles and doubles only, and we follow the same rule so our number stays comparable to your official one. Those matches still appear on your profile, marked as non-scoring.

No rating predicts tennis perfectly. A rating tells you who’s favoured, not who’ll win. Upsets are the sport, not a bug in the math.