The Moment It Clicked

I'm a competitive USTA league player. I've been playing competitively for years, and like most of us, I care about where I stand. Not in an obsessive way, but in the way that anyone who competes at anything wants to know: am I getting better?

If you play USTA leagues, you know the drill. You've got your NTRP rating on TennisLink. Maybe you've checked your UTR on the Universal Tennis app. Maybe you've heard about this new thing called WTN from the ITF. And if you're really deep in it, you've been on TennisRecord trying to figure out your estimated dynamic rating before bump season hits.

That's three different platforms, three different rating scales, three different update schedules, and three different ways of telling you how good you are at hitting a fuzzy yellow ball over a net.

"I'm a 3.5 in NTRP, a 3.55 in UTR singles, 4.86 in UTR doubles, and a 29.35 in WTN. What does that actually mean? Am I improving? Am I about to get bumped? Nobody could give me a straight answer."

That moment, staring at three different numbers on three different screens and having no idea how they related to each other, is when I decided to build something better.

Who I Am (and Who I'm Not)

By day, I'm an SAP consultant. I'm not a software engineer. I don't have a computer science degree. I'm not a venture-backed founder with a team of developers. I'm a guy with a full-time job, a competitive tennis habit, and a frustration that wouldn't go away.

What I do have is deep experience as a USTA league player. I know what it's like to check TennisLink constantly during bump season. I know the feeling of wondering whether that 6-4, 6-3 loss to a 4.0 is going to tank my rating or barely register. I know the conversations we have after matches — "What's your UTR? Do you think you're getting bumped? Have you checked TennisRecord?"

I built MyTennisRating because I'm the target user. The problems I'm solving are problems I live with every season.

The Problem Is Real

Here's what competitive tennis players deal with right now:

NTRP updates once a year. You play an entire season — dozens of matches, wins, losses, close ones, blowouts — and then you wait until December to find out if any of it mattered. For the other 11 months, you're flying blind.

UTR is great but expensive. At $24.99 a month for the full experience, it's a real cost for recreational players. And even if you pay, it's a separate system from the NTRP that actually determines your league eligibility.

WTN exists, but nobody quite understands it yet. The scale runs backwards (lower is better), adoption in the US is early, and most players I talk to have never even looked up their number.

Nothing connects them. There's no single place where you can see all your ratings side by side, understand how they relate, and track them over time. You're left opening tabs and doing mental math.

The Real Pain Point

It's not just about seeing a number. It's about understanding what that number means for your game, your season, and your future. Am I actually a 3.5 who's about to be a 4.0? Or am I a 3.5 who's been treading water? Right now, answering that question requires checking three platforms, cross-referencing data manually, and still guessing.

What I'm Building

MyTennisRating is a unified tennis rating intelligence platform. The vision is simple: one place to see all your ratings, understand what they mean, and track how you're progressing.

We started with the Rating Translator — a free tool that lets you instantly convert between NTRP, UTR, and WTN. It's live right now, and it's completely free. No signup, no paywall, no catch. I wanted to build something genuinely useful and put it out there before asking for anything in return.

From there, the roadmap includes a unified dashboard where you can track all your ratings in one place, a dynamic rating tracker that estimates where you stand between official NTRP updates, match impact analysis that shows how individual matches affect your numbers, and eventually tools for team captains who are currently managing lineups in spreadsheets and group texts.

You can see the full feature roadmap here.

How I Think About This

I want to be upfront about the principles guiding this project. These aren't marketing copy — they're the standards I'm holding myself to, and I'm putting them in writing so you can hold me to them too.

Guiding Principles

  • Create real value before extracting profit. The Rating Translator is free. The educational guides are free. Trust is earned before money is asked for. The free version of MyTennisRating will always be genuinely useful — not a crippled teaser designed to force you into paying.
  • Respect player privacy. When we build features like opponent scouting, they'll be opt-in by default. You control your own visibility. Nobody's match data gets surfaced without their consent. "We respect player privacy" will be a real differentiator, not a checkbox on a legal page.
  • No shortcuts on data. We're not scraping USTA, UTR, or ITF data without permission. Phase one is built entirely on data you choose to enter yourself. If we pursue data partnerships later, we'll do it through legitimate channels. If that door stays closed, we'll build a product that's valuable without it.
  • Honest pricing. If we introduce premium features, it'll be $5.99/month or $49.99/year. That's it. No hidden fees, no dark patterns, no "you've been subscribed" surprises. I want 1,000 players who genuinely find this worth paying for — not 10,000 people tricked into a recurring charge.
  • Reputation over quick gains. The competitive tennis community is small. Everyone knows everyone. Every decision I make should pass a simple test: if this became public knowledge in my USTA league, would I be comfortable? If the answer is no, I don't do it.

Why I'm Sharing This

Because I think the tennis community deserves transparency. Too many products launch with slick marketing and vague promises. I'd rather tell you exactly who I am, what I'm building, why I'm building it, and what rules I'm playing by — and then let the work speak for itself.

I'm also sharing this because I need your help. Not your money. Your perspective. I've put together a short survey to understand how competitive players like us feel about the tools that exist today. If you've got three minutes and an opinion about tennis ratings (and I know you do), your input will directly shape what gets built next.

And if you'd rather just text me your thoughts instead of filling out a form — that works too. I'm all ears.

What's Next

The Rating Translator is live. The guides for NTRP, UTR, and WTN are published. The survey is going out to my tennis network this week. And I'm heads-down on the unified dashboard.

If you're a competitive tennis player who's ever been frustrated by how fragmented rating information is — this is being built for you. Not by a faceless tech company. By a fellow league player who shares the same frustrations.

Thanks for reading. See you on the court.

— Ron