The World Pickleball Ratings (WPR) is a system of calculating ranking points for pickleball players. It considers all tournaments that are either sanctioned by the United States of America Pickleball Association or included on pickleballtournaments.com since June 2020.
The World Pickleball Ratings were created to eliminate the self skill-rating based qualification for players to get into tournament brackets. This is a misconduct that is better known as sandbagging, where players underperform intentionally to gain an unfair advantage. The World Pickleball Rating rather employs a system wherein a player’s ratings are calculated based on their consistency and performance in the tournaments they enter. This feature is called the rating deviation and is the highlight of the Glicko-2 system that the World Pickleball Rating utilizes.
Players who have a USA Tournament Player Ratings (UTPR) can continue to use them along side the World Pickleball Ratings. If a player feels their World Pickleball Rating is inaccurate, then the organization also has a system for appeals.
A player who freshly registers to get a WPR rating will get one based on their performance in the tournament and the rating of their opposition players. A four-digit rating is obtained for singles, doubles, and mixed doubles categories. At the end of each quarter, the four-digit rating is modified into a corresponding two-digit rating.
As of September 2024, Anna Leigh Walters is the highest ranked women in both the singles, doubles, and mixed doubles categories. JW Johnson is the leading men’s singles tennis player. In doubles, Collin Johns finds himself at the helm of the rankings. Ben Johns is the highest ranked male tennis player in mixed doubles. World Pickleball Ratings are also available for senior men and senior women.
