Tito Machado: What Your DUPR Is Really Telling You

If you play pickleball, there’s a good chance you’ve checked your DUPR after a match and either celebrated, questioned the algorithm, or wondered how the heck your rating just went down after a win.For the Season 1 finale of 99% Pickleball, Mari and Nikki sit down with DUPR CEO Tito Machado to talk about what your rating is actually supposed to tell you and why players may be putting way too much weight on the number.Tito explains why DUPR was built as a way to help players find better, more competitive games, not as a ladder everyone needs to climb. As he puts it, the goal is to represent how you play on an average day, not your best day.They get into the questions players are constantly debating: Why can you win and still go down? Can one rating really work across ages, genders, and countries? What happens when an entire region develops its own rating bubble? And how is DUPR trying to make ratings more accurate without making players even more obsessed with them?Tito also shares what’s coming with DUPR AI and DUPR Coach, how the company is addressing sandbagging and verification, and what happens when players create a second account to escape a rating they don’t like. Spoiler: DUPR knows about the burners.Plus, Tito shares how he went from college tennis and UTR to joining DUPR before he had ever played pickleball, and why the community surrounding the sport ultimately convinced him to stay.It’s a fitting end to Season 1 and a conversation for anyone who has ever cared just a little too much about the number next to their name.