Thursday, December 2, 2021 (Court Day #441)

I arrived at Skypark at 6:30. It was a colder evening, toward the end of the session, you could see your breath of you deeply exhaled.

It was a bit lighter crowd, there were never more than six courts set up. I hadn’t even started to set down my backpack when I got called over into a game with Nancy against Mark Dettle and Kristin L.

I popped around from game to game. Nothing of great note.

I was in a rubber match with Tim against Larry and Paul, we were leading 7-1 when the lights clicked off at 9:30. There was a combined “Awwwwwww…” sounds from 3-4 courts!

And?

I felt ok about my play. Not happy, but not depressed either. There were two shots, me on the right side, dink to my forehand and I thought I had enough lift to make the shots, but both hit the white tape. *sigh*

Wednesday, December 3, 2021 (No Play)

I recently heard about DUPR ratings. Apparently, that stands for “Dreamland Universal Pickleball Ratings” and their website is here:
https://www.dupr.gg/

They say, “The current rating system throws away significant information from pickleball results. Too often, this results in wildly inaccurate ratings and fails to incentivize higher ranked teams to ever play lower ranked teams.”

And they are right. As the USAPA rating currently stand, a sanctioned tournament where you win 11-0 is treated the same as a 15-13 win. That’s data that should be used, not discarded.

And DUPR wants to have the full rating listed publicly so instead of just 3.0, you’d see 3.499 for a player. (That’s kind of where I am. I haven’t played in a sanctioned tournament in over two years, but eventually, I will. As it stands, I’m hovering just below a 3.5 rating at 3.432, so the USAPA has me shown as a 3.0 player. But I wouldn’t play in a tournament as a 3.0, I don’t feel that’d be fair.)

Maybe not a surprise, I see that the USAPA is looking to update their rating system now . . . though I can’t find the link. They were referring to the initial roll out of the UTPR system as “phase 1”. I don’t recall seeing any previous reference to “phases” of the UTPR system, but there you have it.

This has a good explanation of this new DUPR rating system:
https://www.boiseareapickleball.org/news/12131497
So, you sign up for a free account, and enter your scores into an app when you finish a game—no tournament needed! Once another player on the court verifies the entered result, it becomes official and is reflected in your DUPR rating.

I don’t know how I missed hearing about DUPR. It’s been around at least since April.

Number of days on a court: 441
Number of total hours: 2,157.5

To start at the beginning of this blog click on “1st Post” in the menu above.