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Issue of Inside Tennis
The DCTR Is In (FLASH!!! DCTR is sold to the USTA for tennis in the USA.)
Steve Broulliard is trying to build a network of tennis players in central Oregon by using a Northern California software program that he thinks can one day significantly change tennis coast to coast--if the USTA gets behind it.
"Boy, if the USTA could ever get into this, take it and run with it, why it would almost revolutionize tennis" the tennis shop owner says. "And I'll tell you, once a player is part of this rating program, they want all their friends in on it, too."
Brouillard, whose shop is in Bend, Oregon, is the proud possessor of the Dynamic Computer Tennis Rating (DCTR) software program. It's the program that a USTA NorCal committee approved for a trial, after getting the okay from the national USTA to investigate solutions to the NTRP rating shortcomings. Now in its second year of experimentation, DCTR is being used by eight clubs in Northern California, one in Arizona and by Broulliard. Even if it's not very well known at this stage, it has had inquiries from Great Britain and Hong Kong.
The DCTR program does a lot of things. It's an answer if not the solution to complaints from players that the annual NTRP ratings get misleading as a season wears on. Some players' games take nosedives. Others surge confidently with a newfound skill level. DCTR would reflect this. It takes results of official tournament and league matches and dynamically adjusts NTRP ratings on the spot. But it also takes other results, too. Non-sanctioned club or park competitions, for example. Even practice matches. All the results are weighted, of course.
The DCTR program also works handily with doubles results.
Then there are additional practical aspects of DCTR. It can group players by rating, age, availability and gender, and the computer can print player records in an instant.
"The main thing is it brings to a club, or group of players, a common competitive ladder program," says Maricio Achondo, tennis director of the Twin Abors club at Lodi. "People can play against each other but they won't automatically lose their position on the ladder. It takes two or three wins to overtake a position, which encourages play instead of making people afraid of it."
Oddly enough, there is a strong element of fear in conventional ladder play that inhibits ladder activity, club pros say. A one-time winner taking over the higher-ranking loser's position after one match is too abrupt, too brutal, many players feel. So some players who love their ladder rank, hide. Many feel that advancement should be proved more convincingly, which is what DCTR requires as it adjusts ratings, however minutely, after every score that's entered. People move up or down based on their changing ratings, and it may take two or three matches to overtake a position. The job of the committee selecting DCTR, incidentally, was to not just make the ratings accurate but to increase a player's input, plus involve more players.
DCTR is not a handicapping system. It is a dynamic rating with bells and whistles that sometimes take time to exploit.
"I've had it for a while but I'm slow getting to use it," says John Matkulak, tennis director at Lakeridge Tennis Club in Reno, who has used it only as a ladder for about 50 men. "We have a ton of leagues. And people always think they belong higher than where they do belong. Some don't want to play what they call patty-cake tennis and want to play up. We hope this will resolve a lot of those league problems. I'm excited to use it. The scores go in and a new rating is calculated. It puts a sharper edge on the rating."
In Lodi, Achondo says using DCTR is a great way for in-coming members to find where they rank. Based on their NTRP rating, a new member picks a place to challenge. "But they don't get into the system until they have a win," Achondo says. "The computer doesn't know how to deal with a loss with no prior record."
Actually, Achondo has been using this system and, before it, its predecessor TopDog, for six years. Michael Friedman of Placerville developed the software. His Topdog software is being used full-time for the first time this year by the USTA NorCal leagues in all 14 sections for such things as scheduling and team rosters.
The only downside Achondo sees is that DCTR is long term commitment.
"Interclub people are used to ladder systems and challenges to take over positions," Achondo says. "That doesn't work with DCTR. It protects people and gives rankings a true meaning. It's very accurate. But it may take two years for the accuracy to jell.
"You have to have meetings with everyone to explain these things. They need to know, too, that there is a logic between winning a match love and love or three and three or in three sets. A win is weighted as to its characteristics. There is an expected score. And every point is important.
"If everybody inputs every match then there is movement and there is competition and its true. But if you have 60 active and 40 protecting themselves it doesn't happen. Whatever, I do think the service ought to be free."
What most excites Steve Brouillard, who found out about DCTR from a friend at Arden Hills and then contacted Friedman on the Internet where he has a Web page, is the flexibility of DCTR. "It has a unique social component and competitive component too," he says. "Some people can use it just to meet people. The biggest complaint I ever hear is 'I can't find people to play.' Well, here it is. I can just hand them a list of other players within a half point of them."
Brouillard has his computer in his sports store on Century Drive on the way to Mt. Bachelor, a skiing resort like Vail, Colorado, that attracts a lot of vacationers and tennis players. He has three other stores in a 200-mile triangle in Salem, Eugene and Portland. With 150 on his ladder now, and another 50 expected soon from a recent tournament, he wants to soon link all his stores up with DCTR and spread his network.
"I went down to Eugene the other day and dropped in a club where a guy was running a ladder for the area," he says. "I asked him how things were going and he said just fine, he had 15 on his ladder. Fifteen! It made my 150 look pretty good."
Brouillard charges a $15 annual fee. He has dumped about $800 into advertising, plus the $300 cost for the software. Having gotten a few manufacturers involved, he awards incentive prizes for ladder activity. Weekly he emails results to half his ladder, the others drop by the store for them, as they do for player histories.
An immediate goal for Brouillard is to be able to give any player from Bend going off to visit in Portland, Salem or Eugene, a list of players to contact.
"Leagues have been such a huge plus in getting that participation level up in the U.S.," he says. "But if this program was available in every section around the country, matches could be recorded from Oregon to Florida. People would use it on vacations and to meet and play other players, and all the scores would be recorded. And this all could go on the Internet."
Right now the program exists in 8 experimental sites in Northern California and two out of state. All are proceeding at different rates. But the goal among the Northern California sites is to hook up by the end of the year when the two-year experiment will come to a close.
January 9, 1997
Contact: Tom Carter 510-748-7373, x2927
USTA NORCAL IS DYNAMIC (NTRP) RATING EXPERIMENT
IS MID-WAY IN TESTING DCTR SOFTWARE AT PLAYING SITES
Imagine playing a match and immediately afterward seeing your NTRP rating change on a computer screen, even if it's a practice match you've just played.
The USTA Northern California section thinks this is not only possible, but that such a dynamic rating service, and its associated benefits, may soon be available for thousands of players at hundreds of Northern California sites.
The section is in the middle of a two-year experiment geared toward delivering that capability now. Taking part are more than a dozen Northern California sites and one in Arizona.
The worker bee at the bottom of this is a software program called Dynamic Computer Tennis Rating (DCTR). It takes into account four levels of results: practice matches, non-sanctioned club or park competitions, USTA leagues, and USTA tournaments. The results are weighted, of course.
What stimulated this development was the grousing of finicky players over static NTRP ratings which are given at the start of the year and remain in concrete until the end. But along the way, as everyone knows, some improving players jump out of their ratings, and others fall behind them. Hence the demand for accuracy.
Hearing the plea, the USTA NorCal got the go sign from the national USTA to examine the situation. NorCal formed a four-man study committee and after many months the possible solution it came up with was DCTR. It's a design by Michael Friedman, a software developer from Placerville, his version of a software called TOPDOG. The program has nothing to do with handicapping, incidentally, only dynamic rating.
Right now, the locales which have been inputting and receiving onsite information are issuing updated NTRP ratings every two weeks. Player participants in the experiment are restricted to those within a half NTRP rating point (.5) of each other. Any site that wants to join the experiment can do so for $300, the software cost.
Later this year all of the sites will be linked together. The collective player input will be evaluated and ratings will become instantaneous from on-site kiosks. These kiosks will also serve as repositories of information and able to call up a player's profile, and other select data. Input can be both singles and doubles, for each will have dynamic ratings.
As committee member Kim Fuller says, "Before, the system was taking in two to 15 (league) matches a year (per player), which wasn't very many." The committee's job was to increase a player's input, involve more players, and to make those ratings accurate.
The section has so far put $15,000 into the project.
The benefits of DCTR:
* Immediate rating adjustment feedback, with a wide range of the kinds of results that can be entered and no restriction on the amount.
* Profiles available for players, coaches, league team-forming captains, tournament directors, in-house competitions. etc.
* The kiosk as a central focus where players interact with it and each other, increasing traffic in pro shops or any retail outlet where it is placed.
* Availability of a variety of other reports (mailing lists, phone numbers, etc.)
Other informational progress reports will be released on DCTR in the future.
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