Pickleball: Lead Data Scientist Reveals How DUPR's Stats-Driven Approach is Changing The Game Forever

The Dynamic Universal Pickleball Rating (DUPR) system has a primary goal and that is to make pickleball more enjoyable by solving the problem of players playing against those who are not at the same level.

This was the central message from a recent discussion with Sarah Carpenter, a lead data scientist at DUPR. Carpenter stressed on how the system is trying to solve this issue by eliminating the frustrations arising from players not competing at their appropriate level and thereby missing out on the fun of playing a competitive game.

When asked about the most important problem to solve for DUPR right now, she said, "There is this overall problem in the pickleball world that we're trying to solve: allowing players to play at their level right and eliminating the frustrations that come along with people not playing at their level, like sandbagging, and it's just not fair, not fun. All of that and really trying to make it competitive for everyone."

"So that's our problem statement every day, and my team is working on improving the algorithm. Our club's team is working on enhancing partnerships so we can continue to get more data. So we can continue to educate people better on how to use our product and educate directors on how to use our product. And just continue to create as fair of a playing field as possible for everyone," she added while speaking on the YouTube chat show - Talk Pickle To Me.

DUPR founder Steve Kuhn recently said that there is only one person who would hate pickleball, or there is only one type of person who would hate pickleball, and that is the person who goes to the court and doesn't play with people around their level.

"If you go there and you're tremendously better than everyone on the court You're having a shitty time if you're going that if you're on the court and you're the worst player by a lot on the court," explained Carpenter.

"You're having a terrible time and so DUPR enables people to play at their level with people around their level to have fair, fun, and exciting games.

Carpenter highlighted many benefits for clubs and how they no longer need to rate players themselves. It is a very difficult and often argumentative process, she explained.

She also spoke about how Pod Play has formed an important partnership with DUPR. Pod Play's video replay systems support official DUPR competition matches. They automatically send data to the DUPR system and update player ratings in real-time. This integration helps players track their progress easily and ensures their ratings are accurate.

"We also want to build these partnerships with people like pod play who are doing other really cool things in the sport. We cannot do every cool thing. We got to like really channel in on our one cool thing. Yeah, and build these important partnerships with other people who are doing cool things. So it's really fun to get to do that and just be in the center of the sport. We do believe that we're critical and we take it very seriously," Carpenter concluded.

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