How does a match tiebreak count toward your rating?

Most USTA league matches replace a third set with a 10-point match tiebreak. It appears in your record as 1-0, which looks like a placeholder or a bug. It is neither.

It is one set and one game

A match won 6-4, 4-6, [10-7] is recorded as 6-4, 4-6, 1-0. Those ten points you fought for count as exactly one game.

— Per USTA's published national regulations.

Why that can feel unfair

NTRP is sensitive to games won and lost, not only to who won the match. So a third set decided by a tiebreak contributes far fewer games than a full set would have — a 7-5 third set is twelve games, the tiebreak that replaced it is one.

Two players can have near-identical seasons and see different rating movement purely because one league plays full third sets and the other does not. That is worth knowing before you read too much into a season's numbers.