Every official Cup Series club selects its squads — often through open trials — and one number decides more than anything else which division that squad competes in: Playtomic rating. It’s the same system used across the growing Cape Town scene — including by the players ranked at Padel4Good’s community tournaments — so it’s worth understanding properly before squad selection.
What is a Playtomic rating?
Playtomic rates every player on a scale from 0 to 7, with 7 being the highest level. It’s a dynamic rating: it moves as you play, calculated from your match results and the strength of the opponents you beat or lose to. A string of wins against stronger players pushes it up quickly; losses to weaker opponents pull it down. It’s designed to answer one practical question — who can you actually compete with on court — rather than reward how long you’ve been playing.
What the bands actually mean
In practice, players and clubs group the scale into rough skill bands. They’re not official Playtomic categories, but they’re widely used because they’re accurate:
How Cup Series uses it
Cup Series splits each gender into three divisions using this scale — Men’s Social (2.5 to 3.5), Challenger (3.5 to 4.5) and Premier (4.5 and up); Women’s Social (2 to 3), Challenger (3 to 4) and Premier (4 and up). The goal is simple: a club’s squad shouldn’t find itself facing opponents a full level above or below its own. A useful sense-check when you’re rating yourself honestly is that a genuine 3.5 wins roughly half their matches against other 3.5s — if that sounds about right for you, you’re probably rated correctly.
Getting an accurate rating before squad selection
Because the rating is calculated from your match history, it’s only useful if you have one. A handful of ranked matches on Playtomic before squad selection gives you and your teammates a number that actually reflects how you play, rather than a guess. It also means less risk of your club’s squad landing in the wrong division once the season starts — which is more fun for everyone on court, not just you.
Getting your first rating without a match history
If you’ve never used Playtomic before, don’t guess blind. The fastest way to get a real number is to play a handful of casual, logged matches before squad selection — most partner clubs, including Padel X in Somerset West and the other clubs on our venues page, run open sessions and socials where results get logged through the app. A few matches against players you’d expect to beat, split with, and lose to will settle your rating faster than months of unranked hitting.
If logged matches genuinely aren’t an option before squad selection, be honest rather than optimistic: rate yourself against the band descriptions above, not against how you’d like to play. A club that under-rates a strong player tends to find itself outclassing an entire division, which is no fun for anyone on the other side of the net — and a squad that’s rated too high just spends the season chasing scores it can’t catch.
Not sure which division your squad belongs in once you’ve got your ratings sorted? Our guide to how Cup Series works covers the full season format, and our FAQs on the homepage cover the most common questions about division fit. If your club is interested in joining the league, get in touch.
