The Value of Level-Based Play with Greg Chambers

Summary

Greg Chambers — director of tennis at Ensworth School in Nashville, Tennessee (six indoor courts, six outdoor courts, state-of-the-art facility funded by a Hospital Corporation of America co-founder; host of D3 women’s national indoors; 175 kids in the program) — joins Lisa Stone to discuss his experience running UTR-based level-play events over three or four years and the concrete retention data he has observed. The episode covers: UTR as a codification of what all great club pros already do intuitively; the 62% dropout rate after one USTA tournament (from a USTA national staffer); 1,300 matches across UTR events with “one 0-and-0”; mixed-age and mixed-gender level grouping as the natural state of tennis; the tension between UTR (for-profit) and the forthcoming USTA rating system (nonprofit); mindfulness training at level-based events to address conduct issues when boys lose to girls or older players lose to younger; the incoherence of the current USTA junior ranking system; and a reference to Charles Allen’s Quartive platform as the tournament management tool Chambers used before UTR developed its own scheduling system.

Guest Background

Greg Chambers grew up in Richmond, Virginia, where his mother was the junior program committee chair at a swim-and-tennis club. He played junior tournaments, earned a college scholarship at Lipscomb University in Nashville (where he has been based since), briefly attended medical school (“about a week”), and then built a 30-plus-year coaching career. He worked at for-profit clubs, learned the tension between tennis and court-rental economics, and ultimately landed at Ensworth School, a K-12 private school in Nashville. His facility — funded by a major donor who is among the wealthiest individuals in Tennessee — includes six indoor courts above a parking garage, six outdoor courts, covered viewing, a golf simulator and bays, and viewing over a turf field. He has run UTR level-based events since UTR’s early public availability, has worked with UTR global event manager Randy Janks, and attended the National UTR High School Championships at Harvard. He knew Brian Baker (former ATP professional from Nashville) from his club coaching days.

Key Findings

1. 62% of Players Who Play One USTA Tournament Never Play Another — and UTR Events Don’t Have This Problem

The most alarming statistic in the episode: a USTA national-level staffer told Chambers that 62% of players who play their first USTA junior tournament never play a second one. Chambers is direct about the business implication: “If you’re selling furniture, if you’re selling houses, insurance — when you hear 62% are not coming back, you’re going to go bankrupt.” His UTR events, by contrast, show near-zero 0-and-0 outcomes: over 1,300 matches run in less than two years, one single 0-and-0. The mechanism is close matches — when the loser gets seven games in a 7-5 set, they leave wanting to try again, not defeated. Age-gender-based grouping produces blowouts; level-based grouping produces close competition.

2. UTR Is Not a New Idea — It Quantifies What Every Good Club Pro Already Does

Chambers’ core reframe of UTR’s value: “It’s really not anything new. It’s what every pro at every club does — they pair kids by level. What UTR has done, phenomenally, is come up with a way to quantify a player’s ability.” The rating system provides a third-party, objective basis for groupings that previously depended on a coach’s subjective assessment (and invited parental challenges). “Instead of me getting blasted by parents — ‘my kid can’t be on the same court as that kid’ — I can point to the number.” The number replaces negotiation.

3. Tennis Is Level-Based by Nature — Age and Gender Are Administrative Impositions

Chambers makes the structural argument explicit: tennis players have always sought level-based competition, not age-based or gender-based competition. “When I was in Richmond, I knew exactly who I needed to be on the court with and who was better than me and who I was better than.” UTR is restoring the sport’s natural competitive structure. The mixed-age and mixed-gender grouping that UTR enables is not radical — it is how adult tennis has always worked. The 11-year-old boy at a higher UTR than the 17-year-old girl is the correct competitive pairing. The mindfulness education required when that happens is a social skill lesson, not a tennis problem.

4. Quartive Platform Referenced Explicitly

Chambers names Charles Allen’s Quartive platform as the tournament management tool he used before UTR developed its own scheduling system: “Charles Allen is brilliant to develop that platform — UTR was kind enough to let us use that.” Chambers was using Quartive for match scheduling and bracket management at UTR events, migrating when UTR’s own schedule-of-play system became available.

5. UTR’s Marketing — Pros’ UTR Ratings as Engagement Tool

Chambers describes UTR’s marketing strategy around publishing professional players’ UTR ratings: “With their relationship with the Tennis Channel, they’ll put up the pros’ UTRs. Well, that’s silly — I mean, but that’s great marketing.” The logic: professionals’ UTRs are all at the ceiling of the scale and comparing them is meaningless because every match between them is competitive. But showing a viewer that Federer has a UTR of X and then showing them their own kid’s UTR of Y creates emotional connection: “The marketing behind it is to say, hey, they have a UTR — you can have one too.” This is enrollment as identity, not analytics.

6. The USTA Ranking System Is Incoherent and Encourages Mis-Investment

Chambers is direct about the structural flaw in USTA junior rankings: points-per-round ranking only works if all players compete in the same events, which they don’t. “The only way you can create a ranking system fairly and accurately is if all the players play the same tournaments — and they’re just not going to do that.” The result: rankings that reward tournament frequency and travel budget rather than competitive level. His illustration: “I know the girl in Tennessee who’s 14 and should be number one or two — she just doesn’t care to play any state-level events because she can play national-level events.” The system has no pathway that starts local and builds upward coherently.

7. The Local-to-National Pyramid as Tennis Retention Infrastructure

Chambers articulates what a functioning tennis development system would look like: local events → state qualifiers → sectional → national → international, with accurate rating-based seeding at each step. The mechanism for retention: “If we can get X amount of players in the state tournament because of our USTA membership, we’re all going to be out here selling it — promoting it.” Local coaches would recruit players because each new player improves the local pool that earns state slots. The current system, where national entries are available to any player whose family can write the entry check and drive to the event, breaks this pyramid.

8. Mindfulness as a Prerequisite for Mixed-Level Play

Chambers conducts mindfulness sessions before level-based events not as a mental performance exercise but as a social conduct protocol: when level-based grouping produces a 17-year-old boy losing to an 11-year-old girl, both players need preparation. “Being mindful in how to treat that opponent is important — that’s a good life lesson.” He identifies specific conduct failures common in junior tennis: excessive line-call challenges, “come on” exclamations when an opponent dumps a ball into the net, intimidation patterns. Level-based play surfaces these conduct issues more visibly because the traditional protections (age/gender segregation) are removed.

Actionable Advice for Families

• Seek out UTR-based level-play events in your area — the format produces competitive matches, reduces blowout outcomes, and improves retention at every level
• Understand that your child’s UTR is a more accurate competitive indicator than their USTA ranking, which depends heavily on which specific events they enter
• Prepare your child for mixed-age and mixed-gender competitive contexts: losing to a younger or female player is not a failure — it is accurate competitive feedback
• Do not interpret a high ranking as competitive evidence without also knowing whether the ranking reflects travel investment or actual competitive level
• Support local tennis community events: the local-to-national pyramid can only function if the local base is active, and that requires families who participate in area events rather than bypassing them for national entries

INTENNSE Relevance

• UTR integration as player evaluation standard: Chambers’ detailed UTR analysis — its predictive accuracy, its fluid nature, its cross-demographic applicability — supports INTENNSE using UTR as part of its player evaluation framework. A player’s UTR trajectory across different competitive contexts is more diagnostic than their ATP/WTA ranking entry history
• Mixed-gender competitive experience as INTENNSE preparation: Chambers describes a senior boy losing to a foreign exchange girl 6-4, 6-3 — within the competitive threshold, a good match, a life lesson. INTENNSE’s mixed-gender format will produce similar competitive realities. Players who have trained and competed in UTR-based level environments — where gender is not a grouping criterion — are better prepared for INTENNSE’s format than those who have only competed in sex-segregated brackets
• Quartive platform acknowledgment: Chambers cites Charles Allen’s Quartive platform directly, using it for tournament management at UTR events at Ensworth. This is an organic, third-party endorsement of Quartive’s utility in the level-based competition space — exactly the context INTENNSE’s format innovation is built around
• Retention through close competition: Chambers’ 1,300-matches-with-one-0-and-0 statistic is the empirical argument for INTENNSE’s competitive format. The league’s 7-bolt arc, rally scoring, and unlimited substitutions create a viewing and playing experience designed to eliminate uncompetitive outcomes. The UTR level-matching principle at the junior level is analogous to the INTENNSE team-balance principle at the professional level
• Local community engagement as league infrastructure: Chambers’ vision of the local-to-national pyramid — where every local event matters because it feeds into regional qualification — is the model for INTENNSE’s community engagement in each team’s home market. A league whose teams are embedded in the local tennis ecosystem (club events, NJTL programs, UTR events) creates retention infrastructure that sustains the fan base

Notable Quotes

“62% of the kids that play one USTA tournament don’t play another one. If you’re selling furniture, if you’re selling houses — when you hear 62% are not coming back, you’re going to go bankrupt.” — Greg Chambers

“It’s really not anything new — it’s what every pro at every club does: they pair kids by level. What UTR has done, phenomenally, is come up with a way to quantify a player’s ability.” — Greg Chambers

“Charles Allen is brilliant to develop that [Quartive] platform — UTR was kind enough to let us use that.” — Greg Chambers

“If my wife can’t understand it — and she didn’t play — if it can’t be put on a one pager, it’s too complicated. Just make it simple and grow tennis.” — Greg Chambers