TopSeed converts external tennis and pickleball ratings into a universal Normalized rating between 0.1 and 10.0 with one decimal place. Tournament organizers use these ratings to rank entrants, break ties, and seed brackets consistently across singles, doubles, and team events.

The 0–10 Normalized rating scale

Tennis and pickleball rely on different rating systems: tennis uses UTR (1.0–16.0), USTA NTRP (1.0–7.0), or WTN (1–40), while pickleball uses DUPR (2.0–8.0) or UTR-P (1.0–10.0).

TopSeed standardizes all supported rating providers onto one shared scale:

• Every rated player receives a score from 0.1 to 10.0, rounded to one decimal place.
• An unrated player holds an explicit rating of 0.0.
• The rating appears as Norm. Rating in the event's Players tab, in the host's registration table, and in the partner-search table when you look for a doubles partner. It is not shown on your profile page, or in draw brackets and standings.

Worked conversion examples

How seeding works

When registration closes, TopSeed builds entrant units for each draw:

• Singles draws: The entrant's seeding score is their individual Normalized rating.
• Doubles draws: The team's score is the SUM of both partners' Normalized ratings (not the average). For example, a team with ratings 3.0 and 3.0 seeds at 6.0, ranking above a team with 2.5 and 3.4 (total 5.9).
• Team draws: The team's score is the SUM of all participating roster members' Normalized ratings.

Entrants are ranked using TopSeed's deterministic tie-break policy:

1. Rating descending: Higher normalized entrant ratings receive higher seeds.
2. Entity ID ascending: If two entrants have identical ratings, the earlier created system ID breaks the tie deterministically.
3. Unrated sorting: Players with no recorded rating (0.0) sort after all rated entrants.

Host review and approval

In the standard workflow, automated seeding is subject to organizer approval. Tournament directors review proposed seed order and entrant ratings in Ask AI or the draw dashboard. Hosts can approve the order or manually override seed assignments before generating official brackets.

However, if the event creator enables Enable auto-generate brackets in their account preferences (/users/[slug]/preferences), Ask AI automatically approves seeding during the draw generation workflow without requiring an intermediate manual review step. (This automation applies only when initiated by the tournament creator; co-hosts retain the standard interactive review workflow).