Methodology
BayerMath is an independent projection of the PPA Tour’s World Pickleball Rankings, built by Ross Bayer. It recomputes every ranking position from published results using PPA’s published points system — no model, no ratings, no judgment calls hidden in code. This page sets out how it works, what it assumes, and exactly where it falls short.
What is computed
PPA’s system produces two different numbers for every player, and this site shows both.
- Current Seed — one total per discipline (doubles, mixed doubles, singles): the sum of a player’s best results in that discipline inside the ranking window. This is the number tournaments seed from.
- World Ranking — the composite that drives entries, byes and qualification for the Finals: of the doubles seed total, of mixed and of singles.
Lists are kept per gender, which makes eight boards in all — six seed lists and two world rankings. Everything on this site is computed for the official ranking week of , from results through , across events.
How closely it matches the official boards
The accuracy figure is measured, never asserted: every build compares its own output against that week’s official leaderboards, row by row, before anything is published. For the week of , official top-100 seed positions () and official world-ranking positions match the official points total exactly.
The rows that do not match are listed below, by name. Publishing the misses is deliberate: they are the evidence behind the accuracy claim, and they stay on this page until they are resolved.
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Where the numbers come from
- Results. Publicly published tournament results — the same match outcomes anyone can look up — assembled into a table of how far each player got in each draw. Every build is stamped with the exact results snapshot and engine version it was computed from (at the foot of this page), so any number here can be traced to its inputs.
- Event tiers. Each tournament’s points level is recorded by hand from official PPA designations. Nothing is guessed from a tournament’s name.
- The official boards. Weekly snapshots of PPA’s published leaderboards are the validation target the accuracy figure is measured against. They are the record; this site is a projection of them.
The rules, as applied
The arithmetic is PPA’s published system: points by finishing round on each event’s tier, a player’s best results per discipline over a rolling 52-week window, and the // composite above it.
Where the published rules are silent, this site has to choose a reading. Wherever the official boards can arbitrate, candidate readings were tested against them and the one that reproduces the boards was kept — never the one anyone preferred. Where the boards cannot arbitrate yet, the item below says so. These readings are ours, not PPA’s, so all of them are listed here.
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Points below the quarterfinals at the top tiers
The points table published with the announced system stops at the quarterfinals for the biggest events. Below that, the values here follow PPA’s other published grids — a full table on PPA’s Asia site, and the Challenger grids — except in two round-of-64 cells, where only a half-point value reproduces totals actually observed on the boards.
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Two published columns for 250-point events
Official materials carry two slightly different point columns for 250-level events, and the boards use both: one for Asia and Australia events, the other for U.S. Elevated Challengers. Each event here is priced on the column the boards use for it.
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A repeated tournament counts once
When two editions of the same recurring tournament fall inside the window, the boards count only the newer one. That behaviour is not in the published rules; it is observed on the boards, and applied here.
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Round of 128
No published grid carries a round-of-128 value. It earns nothing here.
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The Finals floor
The announced system pays points for going winless at the Finals. How that combines with per-win points is unstated; here it acts as a minimum, which is the reading that fits the published undefeated-champion arithmetic.
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How a mandatory Major counts
Under the announced system the four Majors always count. Whether a Major fills one of the slots or adds on top is unstated, as is whether the rule reaches each discipline’s seed list or only the world ranking; here it fills a slot, within each discipline. Neither reading can be checked against a live board until the new system takes effect, and both will be re-tested then.
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The switchover
Whether results earned before keep the points they were awarded or are re-scored on the new grid is the largest open question, with podium-level consequences. This site assumes “” and shows both readings wherever they differ — see what changes on August 31.
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The window’s exact length
The published rule is “the past 52 weeks”. The exact day count cannot be fully pinned by measurement yet — a narrow band of window lengths reproduces the boards equally well, with exactly 52 weeks at its top. The current-rules boards here use a -day window from inside that band; the announced system is read as exactly 52 weeks, days. The difference can only ever decide a result landing exactly on the window’s boundary.
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Withdrawals
A withdrawal before playing the first bracket match earns no points; a player who has already won keeps the points of the round reached. Public results do not say who officially withdrew, so confirmed cases are recorded individually, each with evidence, rather than inferred from patterns.
One disclosure belongs here rather than in fine print: where the official boards and this site’s reading of a rule disagree about an event, the boards win — see the event list below. The projection’s job is to match what PPA publishes, not to referee it.
Today’s boards and the announced system
PPA has announced a new ranking system for the 2026-27 season, taking effect . Until then the live boards reflect the season now ending: the best results count in each discipline, and the Finals championship pays +. From , the announced system counts the best , makes the four Majors always count, pays one flat semifinal value at events worth points and up, and pays + for the Finals championship with a -point floor for a winless Finals appearance.
Every board on this site can be viewed under either rule set. The default is always the one the official boards serve, and the accuracy figure above is measured on that default — it is a claim about the numbers PPA actually publishes, never about a projection. The full list of rule changes, applied to the current standings, is on the August 31 page.
Events that feed no points
Not every event inside the ranking window feeds the boards. The ones that do not are listed here, each with its reason.
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What this site is not
There is no model here. Nothing is rated, predicted or adjusted, and no opinion is encoded in the arithmetic. The site computes PPA’s own published system as faithfully as it can, publishes every assumption that computation forced, and measures itself against the official boards every week.
The official rankings at ppatour.com are the record. Where a number here differs from an official board, that difference appears in the ledger above — published, not argued with. And if a number on this site turns out to be wrong, it will be corrected in public with the correction noted, not quietly edited.