Over the past four years there have been some significant developments to the competitive structure in Great Britain, which have supported growth in the number of juniors competing regularly from less than 9,000 to over 43,000.
Many of these improvements were identified by listening to coaches, parents, players, organisers and officials involved in the sport. Following feedback from tennis people over the summer season, the next area of competition we will be improving is the Ratings System. The changes will focus on giving more players the opportunity to develop and improve their level and enter and play in the right competitions for their standard.
These changes will be made in a number of stages over the next couple of years starting with addressing the balance between wins and losses to better reward ‘winning’ and provide more opportunities for players to progress their level.
New Ratings Criteria – for juniors
Following a detailed review of the current system and after looking at a variety of change scenarios we will be making these changes:
- A player will need to achieve 4 qualifying wins to move up each rating level from 10.2 to 8.2 – as soon as a player gets 4 qualifying wins their rating will increase to the next level
- From 8.2 upwards, a player will need 6 qualifying wins and a 60% qualifying win to qualifying loss ratio to increase to the next level – this criteria still needs to be achieved within a ratings run period
- A qualifying win will continue to be defined as a win against a player rated the same or higher than you, however a qualifying loss will be changed to be a loss against only players rated lower than you
These initial changes will be made for 1st April 2011 and be the first stage of ongoing improvement to the Ratings System. More information on these changes, detailed FAQs and information on the other areas of the Ratings System to be reviewed can be found at http://www.lta.org.uk/players-parents/Competition/AEGON-British-Tennis-Ratings-Guide/Improvements-to-the-ratings-system/