When I first started playing pickleball I knew nothing of tournaments. I went to a nearby church, paddle in hand, and loved the way I was welcomed, was able to come and go as I pleased, was treated with kindness while learning how to keep score and was complimented when I did something well. The sport and the group I found to play with checked every box to rejuvenate my happiness.
When someone asked me if I had played in a tournament, well, I wanted to know more. How do you find tournaments? How do you get in them? Those were easily answered. The tough challenge was finding someone to play with me. I was a pickleball infant, but fairly athletic and asked to join the “competitive” group after my first visit.
Fast forward a little bit, I had a partner and a tournament chosen. Knowing I was going to do a tournament I took the same approach as all other sports I had played: I practiced. Sure, I still went to open play, but I set aside time to work on shots, went to drill sessions with an instructor, actually tried to learn and work on getting better.
The first tournament I competed in was at a high school and was broken into 2 groups – are you old or are you young. With age as the only separator, I saw some tougher competitors than I did at my friendly church. The next tournament I did required me to have a UTPR rating. Pay to be part of the USA Pickleball Association (USAPA).
Part of that process required me to “self-rate.” There are online guides to help you determine your rating and of course, everyone is an expert if you just ask them. So I combined my online research with expert opinions and self-rated at 3.0. I could get serves in most of the time, my ground strokes were mildly consistent, sometimes I could land a drop shot and I knew that whacking the ball at the net was super fun, but wildly uncontrollable to win a point. However, knowing that the banging approach meant winning a point was basically just luck, I didn’t know how to not do it.
After the first tournament I heard people say I wasn’t 3.0 – I should have been playing 3.5. To me, 3.5 just meant people who whacked the ball even more so I was super scared to try that level. It was awful hearing that people thought I was in the wrong skill level because I had done my due diligence to determine that self-rating. But I also was working to get better. Could I have improved beyond my self-rating before I even played in the tournament? No problem, I thought, the rating system will even it all out.
And that is where anyone who has played a tournament knows, I was very, very wrong.
You have to play the right tournament in order for your rating to go up. You have to play in a skill level higher than your rating in order for your rating to go up. Winning does not mean your rating will go up. Losing will most definitely mean your rating will go down. The rating system is so ridiculous the only thing you can do is tell yourself it doesn’t matter.
But of course, it matters. It matters very, very much.
If you play at your rating level you are a sandbagger. To play above your rating level, you have to find someone willing to play with you despite your punishingly low rating level. The absolute frustration that a simple rating system can cause nearly defeats the joy of the sport – all the wonderful feelings of happiness that came from playing at a church is consumed by the official organization’s inability to have an effective rating system.
Along comes DUPR.
DUPR stands for Dynamic Universal Pickleball Rating and aims to be the most accurate, global rating system in pickleball. It rates players on a scale between 2.000-8.000 based on their match results.
DUPR is an algorithm that uses a player’s last 30 singles or 60 doubles eligible matches. The algorithm considers three factors:
- Points Won: How many points did you win?
- Victory: Did you win or lose?
- Type of Result: Was this a self-posted rec play score, a league match, an unsanctioned tournament or a sanctioned tournament result?
DUPR claims to be the only global rating system in pickleball that encompasses all of a player’s results and rates all players on the same universal scale. That all results, regardless of event type, location or software provider, factor into your DUPR, including recreational games.
I was all-in on this new rating system, constantly checking my DUPR rating and smiling from ear to ear when it closely matched my thoughts on my skill level. More than a full point higher than my UTPR rating, of course I enjoyed this new system.
I played in a small tournament against some really good players and went home with a silver medal. I checked the DUPR rating of my opponents and checked my own DUPR rating multiple times a day after that event. I knew, even without winning the tournament, my rating was going to improve.
No matter how many times I checked a day, nothing was happening. Finally, after 2 weeks, I emailed DUPR. Just a friendly – hey, I played in a tournament, where’s those results – type email. After all, “all results, regardless of event type, location or software provider, factor into your DUPR.”
To my surprise, I got a response. And sadly, it was about as satisfying as the UTPR rating system.
Hi Lara,
DUPR will accept scores from any provider who wants to share results with us. Unfortunately, at this time Pickleball Brackets has decided not to share result data with DUPR. As you may know, DUPR is the official rating of the PPA Tour and the largest clubs and organizations in the country, so this is very unfortunate for the players on Pickleball Brackets.
Here’s what you can do in the meantime:
1.) Request to Pickleball Brackets directly that they share your result data with DUPR.
2.) Request to the organizer of the event that they advocate for sharing result data with DUPR.
3.) Ask your tournament/event organizer to use DUPR’s free tournament software to run events moving forward.
4.) Self-Post your scores from your PB Brackets event using the DUPR platform.
Of course, I was disappointed. This algorithm wasn’t getting scores from all events, it was getting scores from all events that shared results with them. How is that different from what UTPR was doing with sanctioned tournaments? It wasn’t.
Then I thought, well, if I’m really concerned about my DUPR rating going up, I could enter those results myself. It would be tedious and should not be something I have to do, but if I really wanted them in, I could just do it. However, that would put a giant asterisk at the top of my rating – indicating it is “provisional.”
And lastly I thought, if I have to enter these scores myself, why in the world would I enter scores of losses? They aren’t getting tournament results, they have no way of knowing how many games I played, just enter the wins. It’s embarrassing that I had that thought, but sadly, I did.
That’s when I realized DUPR is likely full of people only entering wins, just to boost their rating. If people are sandbagging in tournaments and DUPR does not actually get all results from tournaments, and their solution is to ‘go add ’em yourself,’ then DUPR isn’t accurate either. It’s closer to true, but it’s not accurate.
Now every time I hear a podcast boasting the awesomeness of DUPR and every time I see a pro wearing DUPR on their shirt I can’t help but think I’ve been duped by DUPR. And I was duped by USAPA because I self-rated where research indicated I should be but winning tournaments above my rating still doesn’t nudge that number.
I doubt there will ever be an accurate rating system and I imagine every tournament will require some form of membership (pay to know your inaccurate rating) in order to play. I’m comfortable playing where I think I belong, assuming I can find a partner who will ignore my UTPR rating, but how nice would it be to play in a tournament and take on even competition, just to see where you stand?
