The UTR Dilemma

For those who don’t know, UTR stands for Universal Tennis Rating. It is a proprietary rating system that measures the competitiveness of a tennis player on a scale of 1 (just picked up a racket) to 16+ (Novak and Rafa). It is a relatively new phenomenon developed in the past ten years or so, and any player who has ever competed in a sanctioned tennis tournament will have a score that can be accessed with the click of a mouse on the UTR website. 

I will write a much more in depth primer on UTR and how it is calculated in a later article, but for the sake of convenience, let’s interchange the question by having UTR represent “the level of your opponent.”

This question might seem ridiculous to those tennis players not accustomed to playing in competitive tournaments. After all, wouldn’t you want to know as much as possible about the person you will be competing against? What harm could there be?

Well … naive bystander … allow me to explain.

As I have written in many prior articles, what separate tennis as a particularly difficult sport is the mental aspect of it. The player is out there on the court all alone, and in most important situations, is not even allowed to talk to anyone. No coaching is allowed and so the player must figure everything out on their own as far as how to compete and have a game plan to win. 

This aspect of tennis gets even more tricky when you know the level of your opponent. If you know you are playing someone higher rated, it’s easy to feel there is no hope. You are destined to lose because there is a clear favorite in the match, right? But on the other hand, if you know you are playing someone lower rated, the pressure can be overwhelming, because you’re expected to win. 

Riding on top of all of this is the fact that the UTR will go up or down as a result of the match. The reality is it doesn’t matter for 99% of junior tennis competitors, but there are a segment of players who are interested in playing at a high level, such as bigger sectional or national tournaments, or even for college one day. And the harsh reality is that the UTR matters a great deal in determining selection onto this bigger stage.

So, what is the player to do? Is it better to know the UTR so you know what to expect? Or is it better to be blissfully ignorant, and go into the match without any expectations?

I have had many conversations on this topic and even experimented with my son to see which approach produced the best results, and here is what works best for us.

We NEVER look at the opponent’s UTR before a tournament. In fact, we stopped looking at the draw altogether. Before a match, we have no clue who will be in the tournament, and this approach has worked extremely effectively for us. Now for those of you falling into a state of shock and disbelief, allow me to explain.

When my son first started tournament tennis, we looked at the draws obsessively. We looked at the players who were registered to play even before the draws were posted! And once they were posted, we looked at UTRs as a way to plan and predict outcomes. We spent a few hours before each tournament engaged in this analysis and discussion. We would then play the tournament and nothing would ever unfold as we predicted! It was pointless. First, it was not a good use of time, but more importantly, it only increased the pressure my son felt in the days leading up to the match, and really ramped it up on the day of the match.

He would enter matches against lower rated UTRs (“playing down”) feeling the pressure of expectation. He was “supposed” to win, so if he lost, that meant he wasn’t as good as everyone thought he was. Even if he lost a few points, but had command of the match, I could see this pressure take over and tighten him on the court. 

It was better when he played higher UTRs (“playing up”) because he could sense opportunity. He knew a win here would boost his own rating, and whenever he would get winner’d, he’d easily justify it by thinking, “Well, he is the higher rated player, so these are shots he should be making against me.” The reduced pressure improved his overall shot making, but what we noticed is that if he started losing early in the match, he would surrender the match early. The first set might be close … 7-5 or so, but then the second set would be a blowout, as he felt the climb of beating a higher rated player was too steep and arduous. Thus, he would give up and not give it his best effort.

Enter: Ignorance of it all.

After much discussion on the emotions he was feeling after seeing the draw he was in, we started talking about what would make it better. The approach we had been taken did not seem to be very effective, so we both agreed some kind of change was needed. We decided to not look at the draw before the match, and instead just show up blind and play whoever was assigned to him.

It’s important to remember that up until the emergence of UTR, which has only been since 2008, this is how all junior tennis matches functioned. The kids had no idea about the level of their opponents, and whether they were “supposed” to win or lose a given match. There were rankings and reputational gossip, but nothing like the precision and stats we see today. (As a side note: it’s arguable whether UTR has actually improved the game for junior tennis due to mental toil it can have on some kids, but that is for another day).

With our new approach established, we set forth and entered our next series of tournaments. We saw an impact immediately. In my son’s first few matches with this new approach, he played kids with far lower UTRs, but he never knew. Thus, he would assume everyone was higher rated than him and play with the same, high level of intensity in every match. This prevented him from getting tight thinking he could push the ball and still win. Against higher rated kids, he had no idea if he was supposed to win or lose, so would not enter the match with any expectations, whereas before, he would think to himself that a victory would be just to win a set or a few games. 

After establishing this approach a couple years ago, we continue with it to this day (as he approaches his 16th birthday). There are situations where this just doesn’t work because there are kids he has played before, or kids cannot help but talk between matches and brag about UTR levels, but to the degree we can avoid it, we do. It is hard to know whether this approach is more effective than what we were doing before – after all, it’s not like we can go back in time and try something different, but what I will say is that the stress level and disappointments are far lower than before. And for us, that was the most important factor to deal with.

I encourage all parents to take a look at this issue. Tennis is a grueling physical sport, but it is just as taxing mentally and emotionally for the reasons I mentioned at the beginning. What we did might not work for everyone, but I offer our experience as just one unique approach to ensure your kid plays his best junior tennis, and most importantly, keeps the game fun!