Many players wonder how certain tournaments will impact their pickleball player ratings. Well, it depends on the tournament and it depends on which rating. There are several player rating systems and sanctioned and non-sanctioned tournaments may impact some of your ratings while having no effect on others.

First, let’s talk about the three popular rating systems.

USA Pickleball Tournament Player Ratings (UTPR) – UTPR is the official pickleball tournament player rating of USA Pickleball. Only USA Pickleball sanctioned tournaments impact this rating.

World Pickleball Ratings (WPR) – WPR is the official rating system on PickleballTournaments.com. All pickleball tournaments run on the PT.com platform will impact your WPR — whether sanctioned or non-sanctioned. The only time that a tournament on PT.com does not impact your WPR is if the Tournament Director specifically opts out, which is highly uncommon. More than likely, if you register and play in a tournament on PT.com, your results will affect your WPR (significantly or slightly, based on your tournament performance).

Dynamic Universal Pickleball Ratings (DUPR) – DUPR is a completely separate rating system that is not displayed on PT.com. Unlike UTPR and WPR where you have three different skill ratings — one for gender doubles, one for mixed doubles, and one for singles. DUPR only has two skill ratings — doubles and singles. The engine assumes that your doubles and mixed ratings are the same. I believe only PPA tournaments are currently using/reporting results to DUPR. I’m not sure if any other tournaments are reporting results to DUPR. Besides that, the rest of the statistics on DUPR are self-reported, which allows the everyday recreational player who does not and may never play in a tournament to have a somewhat official pickleball rating.

Since very few tournaments use DUPR and this statistic is not shown on your PT.com profile, this article will focus on the two ratings that are most relevant to tournament players — UTPR and WPR. I’ve created this guide to help you determine if your tournament results will impact one or both of these ratings.

If you are wondering if a certain tournament will affect your UTPR or WPR, here are some things to remember:

• All tournaments — sanctioned or non-sanctioned, it doesn’t matter — on the PT.com platform will impact your WPR. (There might be some exceptions but, in general, your WPR will be affected.)

• Only USA Pickleball sanctioned tournaments will affect your UTPR. If the tournament is not sanctioned, then there will be zero impact to your UTPR regardless of how amazing your results may be.

• Tournaments that are hosted on a platform other than PT.com — registration isn’t done through PT.com and the results aren’t reported to PT.com — will impact neither UTPR nor WPR. You can pretty much play whatever level you want to play without having to worry about consequences to either of the two rating systems.

This article may only be relevant to tournament players but I hope the information is helpful. Specially if you are a rec player who wants to dip your toes and start playing in tournaments this year. Good luck and may the odds be ever in your favor.