The DUPR Dilemma
With DUPR’s recent algorithm update came a lot of pickleball discussion in our local pickleball community about its accuracy, validity, and usefulness. I think it’s fair to say that, in general, there’s not a lot of love lost for DUPR. And I get it. As rating systems go, it’s far from perfect.
But it’s also a tool that is growing rapidly in popularity and use for tournament ranking, and frankly, it’s the best solution we’ve got right now. So then how do we learn to live with it, and maybe even come to love it (or at least hate it less)?
What if the solution to our DUPR woes is to reframe our relationship with it and double down rather than to throw up our hands and walk away?
I can already hear the pitchforks and torches being readied, but just stay with me on this for a moment and let’s imagine a different DUPR future.
At a fundamental level, the way we view and use DUPR is a big part of the problem.
As committed players, it’s hard not to feel like our DUPR score is grading our worth as human beings. There’s a little kid in many of us who both fears the implications of a low score, and yearns for the validation of a higher one. That’s just the human condition—”We’re only human. Of flesh and blood we’re made. Human. Born to make mistakes.” (Shout out to Human League!)
But that’s not DUPR’s role. It’s not a judgement made upon us, it’s an indicator of our average level of play—of the consistency of our play from point to point and match to match—that we can use to understand where we really are in the process of evolving our game.
Now if you’re like me, it often feels like a judgement against me—like it’s undercutting my real skill level. And that’s very likely because in my head, I see myself as the player I am when I’m playing my best, not the player I am at my worst. Math, though, doesn’t discriminate. And DUPR is not intended to be a representation of your level of play when you are playing your best. It records the good and the bad and serves up a true average between the extremes. If I really stop and examine my own biases and look at how infrequently I really play my best (maybe 15% of the time?) the score starts to make more sense.
But let’s dig a level deeper. Let’s say you’re one of the unlucky ones who, through circumstances and bad luck, is holding on to a DUPR score that truly does underestimate your real skill and that makes you want to burn the whole system to the ground. DUPR isn’t going away, so how do you course correct and get to a score that better represents you and that you can live with? We have some thoughts.
The law of large numbers and other boring things that matter.
How we’re (mis)using DUPR is the other big driver of our discontent with the system. Most of us only record DUPR scores in intense, high-stress situations like leagues and tournaments because those venues often use it to seed players and then report the scores back to DUPR. But that’s an insane way to try to get a representative score of our true level because for most of us, the volatility of our play increases in high-stress situations. Combine that with the fact that DUPR amplifies the weighting of tournament and league scores because they’re reported by independent 3rd parties, and it’s a double whammy!
That very selective use of the tool means we’re not leveraging the law of large numbers. In my experience, you need 100 DUPR matches to start to scratch the surface of this advantage, and 200 or 300 to start to really see a truly representative picture. At that level, individual games (regardless of the level of the other players or the relative game score differential between you) will only move the needle of your DUPR score by a few thousands of a point.
Once you get to that many games, much of the anxiety associated with the outcome of a DUPR match is removed, or at least significantly reduced, because the outcome is no longer swinging your score up or down radically. It’s just another game and another data point further clarifying and stabilizing your level rating.
So where to from here?
DUPR is imperfect, and we’re making it worse by using it in the worst possible way. So where do we go from here knowing that its use will continue to climb for the tournaments and leagues we all want to play?
I know it sounds insane, but what if we used DUPR to record literally every game we ever played?
Your pulse probably just went up by 30 BPM. But hear me out. If we used DUPR as an ever-present, behind-the-scenes tool like a step counter, we’d see severely reduced volatility, more representative data and scoring, and significantly reduced stress-induced performance issues when we do show up to DUPR-rated events. The anxiety of being rated would start to just blend into the background. As a player this would give you a massive advantage in tournaments because it’s one less big thing you need to worry about. And out of that calmness, you’d likely perform better and score better, producing a positive flywheel effect on your score long-term.
At Zero Zero Two, we’re implementing a unique on-court technology called PodPlay that allows you to keep score of the game live and watch instant replays right there on the court. It also allows you to set up auto-reported DUPR matches when you show up on a court, even for everyday play. You’d obviously always have the option to override that choice (we’re not interested in forcing you to eat your vegetables!). We feel like building a more accurate base together would be a huge win for every member and the community at large. But how do you feel about that? As a club that is of the players, by the players, and for the players, we’d love to hear your opinion, so shoot us a note with your thoughts on our contact page.
For those of you lucky few who have an unnaturally high score tied to a small number of games—and you know who you are!—the system is eventually going to catch up with you unless you perpetually avoid any DUPR-related events. Why not start putting in the work to get it properly dialed under circumstances that are far less daunting than the next tournament? For the rest of you who feel like your score is an abomination, what have you got to lose at this point? Why not leverage low-stress scenarios and the law of large numbers to rewrite your DUPR story?
Wherever you are in the mix, we’re here to help you succeed. We’ll look forward to seeing you out on the courts!
