What the Desk is
The Tennis Desk follows USTA NorCal league tennis in parts of Northern California. It builds a page for each player, team, match and league from USTA's published results. Each player gets a Desk level, the Desk's estimate of how they're playing now, once they've played a line with a winner.
What you can do here
Section titled “What you can do here”- Look up any player, team, match or league with no account. Start from Browse, or type a club name like Belvedere in Search.
- Follow your Desk level, the Desk's estimate of how you're playing now.
- Scout a team before you play it, for free.
- Ask the chat in your own words, or connect your own agent.
- A Desk Pass adds your win chance on each line before you play, when both teams are on the Desk.
How it relates to USTA
Section titled “How it relates to USTA”The Tennis Desk is not affiliated with USTA. The NTRP ratings on the Desk's pages are USTA's, from the rosters USTA publishes (what the letters mean). A Desk level is the Desk's own number, on the same scale as an NTRP rating (how the two compare).
Read the Desk's research
Section titled “Read the Desk's research”The Desk also publishes research on the league as a whole. Each piece answers one question from the Desk's own results.
- Does winning move you up a level?
- Does the home team really win more?
- Does winning at sectionals decide who gets bumped?
- Where do you have to finish to get bumped?
- What happens after a bump?
- Does putting your best pair on line 1 win more matches?
How a research piece is made
Section titled “How a research piece is made”Each piece starts from a question league players ask again and again, on tennis forums, in the chat and in searches, so it answers what readers want to know. The Desk answers it by counting match results, and each figure comes from a query that is run twice because both runs must agree. No piece is written when the results can't answer the question, because a guess is not a finding. A person reads and approves every piece before it's published, so nothing reaches a reader unchecked.
The Desk records how pages are used, including what is typed, and keeps recordings for up to 30 days, as the terms explain.