International Racquetball Tour

International Racquetball Tour New Doubles Scoring and Rankings

BREAKING: NEW DOUBLES SCORING AND RANKINGS

The IRT is establishing a rankings system for pro doubles. Pro doubles is a very exciting part of our sport, as evidenced by the great doubles matches we witnessed at the 2017 UnitedHealthcare US Open. The system will be similar to the ranking system used for pro singles. Due to the fact that players often change partners from event to event, players will earn ranking points as individuals. For each event, the ranking points of the 2 partners will be added together and the team with the most ranking points will be given the highest seed. Ranking points will only be earned for pro doubles at IRT Tier 1 and Grand Slam events, unless players are given specific notification otherwise.

Ranking points are earned as follows:

To establish a starting point for the rankings system, we went back and look at pro doubles divisions from Tier 1 and Grand Slam events over the past 3 years. We have created the starting point of the rankings system with the following events:
2014 UnitedHealthcare US Open
2015 Lewis Drug Pro Am
2015 Long Beach Open
2015 UnitedHealthcare US Open
2016 Lewis Drug Pro Am
2016 UnitedHealthcare US Open
2016 Atlanta IRT Pro Am
2017 Lewis Drug Pro Am
2017 Phase IV Scientific Health & Performance Pro Am
2017 UnitedHealthcare US Open

It is our goal to make pro doubles a regular part of every IRT Tier 1 and Grand Slam event. Acknowledging that it may take some time to reach that goal, we have determined that in order to have a rankings system that is meaningful, we need to keep a minimum of 10 events in the calculation. As we add new doubles events, the older events in the calculation will drop out. When we reach the point that pro doubles is included at events on a regular basis, the system will migrate to a system similar to the pro singles rankings where events drop out of the rankings calculation after 12 months.

These new rankings will be used to prepare the pro doubles draw at the Tier 1 event in Atlanta. The rankings can be downloaded here. IRT Doubles Rankings 10-16-17