ATP & WTA rankings

[ashkor87]

My rankings are not based on performance, neither recent nor last year's.. peak potential moderated by 'any reason to think otherwise' is how I put it. Raducanu needs a fast court, she would have done better at San Jose than Washington.. and she wont get the kind of conditions she thrives in, till the USO (that too, only if they leave the court alone and dont slow it down). Let us agree to disagree.... what is the point of calling Kontaveit #2, for instance? Can she actually beat any of the players I listed in my top 9, if they should meet in the near future? I doubt it.

[Deuce]

You know that the rankings are not based on 'who can or can't beat who'.
It seems that you are saying that if Player A has a losing record against Player B, then Player A should never be ranked above Player B, regardless of their other results.

And if Raducanu requires a very specific type of court to play well, then she would be quite one-dimensional, would she not be? So for Raducanu only, her ranking should be based only on her performances on fast hardcourts, while the results of the other players on all surfaces must be counted?
That's another element of your ranking system - some players should only be assessed on the surface on which they play best, with their results on other surfaces being dismissed.
Hmmm....

And - again - in determining 'your rankings', you are also putting the emphases on results from long ago combined with what you feel is a player's potential.
None of it makes sense to me.

[ashkor87]

let us take them one at a time. I will try to explain..
I assume there is no issue with Swiatek being #1.
Osaka - she is a 4-time major champion, had mental health issues, is clearly over them now. There is nothing wrong with her game, she is playing herself back into form.
Rybakina - no comment necessary. I have always considered her a future champion, she has now proved it.
Gauff - still has weaknesses but has shown the ability to beat good players in big events,
Bencic - again, a top performer a couple years ago, nothing is wrong with her or her game, given the right conditions, namely a fast court, she will do well again.
Leylah - performed above expectations at the French, beating people like Anisimova whom she should not be able to beat. seems to have recovered from injury, so no reason to think she cannot reach that level again. Great player on fast courts, see the match against Osaka in last year's USO.. the match looks like a ping-pong game.
I could go on but I think the reasoning is pretty clear. If you dont agree, tell me why.

[Deuce]

let us take them one at a time. I will try to explain..
I assume there is no issue with Swiatek being #1.
Osaka - she is a 4-time major champion, had mental health issues, is clearly over them now. There is nothing wrong with her game, she is playing herself back into form.
Rybakina - no comment necessary. I have always considered her a future champion, she has now proved it.
Gauff - still has weaknesses but has shown the ability to beat good players in big events,
Bencic - again, a top performer a couple years ago, nothing is wrong with her or her game, given the right conditions, namely a fast court, she will do well again.
Leylah - performed above expectations at the French, beating people like Anisimova whom she should not be able to beat. seems to have recovered from injury, so no reason to think she cannot reach that level again. Great player on fast courts, see the match against Osaka in last year's USO.. the match looks like a ping-pong game.
I could go on but I think the reasoning is pretty clear. If you dont agree, tell me why.

^ I believe I've already done that in my previous 2 posts, ashkor...

[ponchi101]

By this stage of the season, as Suliso said in a post above, perhaps you also need to look at the RACE, not just the ranking. In there, you can see that Jabeur is #2, even without the Wimby finals' points. Pegula is a clean #4, Badosa and Sakkari 7 & 5.
Sure, Sabalenka, Pliskova and Muguruza are in the rankings, despite having done nothing for the year. But that is what the rankings are about. What would you do? Ons reaches the Wimbledon final. She is playing well. But then, she loses her second match at San Diego. Do you drop her out of the top ten? She won Madrid, has been playing well, is at a career high.
The ranking can't be a knee jerk mechanism. "Oh, Rybakina won Wimbledon. She is #1". It can't work that way. This is not a car race in which the person leading is, well, the person leading. It doesn't matter who just raced the fastest lap. The ranking says what the players have done over the last 52 weeks. I agree, Muguruza has done nothing THIS YEAR to be there, but she won Guadalajara. You just can't drop her out of the top 10 just like that.

And about Naomi. I hope you are right, and her mental health issues are over. But it may also mean she has a different perspective, and that may not be good for her tennis. Might be very good for her life, and those things are connected, but are not necessarily parallel.

[ponchi101]

And sometimes, the rankings get it right. Or give you proper indications.
Rybakina won Wimby. She obviously cannot be the #26 player in the world, right? No way.
But look a her results. She lost to Kasatkina last week, and today was taken to three sets by a player ranked #47. A good match, evenly played. Had Rybakina been able to collect the 2,000 points from W, she would have been ranked around #6, and we would be wondering what is happening, coming up with a lot of possible explanations.
Now, no. She is a very fine player, a Slam champion, but she is around #25. And the ranking tells us that.

[Deuce]

And if Rybakina would have had the points from Wimbledon, she may have been seeded at Toronto (depending on when the entry cutoff was)... and so she'd have easier 1st and 2nd round matches in theory - and so would avoid early round matches with players like Kasatkina.

[ashkor87]

just checked - Sakkari, ranked #3, maybe 4 in the world! has won exactly 1 tournament in her life.. in Morocco, in 2019. Tells me something about the rankings.!

[meganfernandez]

just checked - Sakkari, ranked #3, maybe 4 in the world! has won exactly 1 tournament in her life.. in Morocco, in 2019. Tells me something about the rankings.!

Rankings reward consistency. She's made enough deep runs.

[ashkor87]

just checked - Sakkari, ranked #3, maybe 4 in the world! has won exactly 1 tournament in her life.. in Morocco, in 2019. Tells me something about the rankings.!

Rankings reward consistency. She's made enough deep runs.

Consistency doesn't help you win a given match, especially against a good player in a big match .but we have talked about this. I was just shocked at Sakkari, I don't think I would rate her even in my top 20 at this rate..

[ponchi101]

What is your opinion of FAA? Not only he has won only 1 tournament all his life, he is 1-9 in tournament finals. Yet, he is ranked 9th in the world.
You have been talking about the rankings. But, what is your proposal? For example, for the MS1000's in both tours, and since you are talking about the fact that Sakkari has won only one tournament in her life, do you propose that the tournament indeed gives 1000 points to the winner, but a considerable lower number for every other result? 200 points for the finalist, 75 for the SF's, and so on?
The rankings are the way that the seedings were corrected. We are old enough to remember how seedings, prior to the creation of the ATP and WTA, and the pro tours, were simply the whim of the tournament director. That had to go. So, what should be done with Sakkari? Or, you recently also mentioned Badosa. She has 3 total tournaments. Ons has three, Pegula has 1, Raducanu has 1, Kontaveit looks like a Steffi Graf in comparison, with 6, Aryna and Garbie have 10.
Serious question: what would you do with the rankings? Shorten the window of calculation to the last 6 months? (That would leave, sometimes during the year, to only TWO Slams being counted for your ranking). Further increase the points for winners, and drop them for the rest of the rounds? Would you include the number of tournaments you have won in your entire career, in some fancy calculation?
You say you would not rank Sakkari in the top 20. You mean you can name 20 players that are clearly better than her? Sure, I don't think she is the greatest player ever (except amongst Greek women), but it is not as if the woman is clueless out there.

[meganfernandez]

What is your opinion of FAA? Not only he has won only 1 tournament all his life, he is 1-9 in tournament finals. Yet, he is ranked 9th in the world.
You have been talking about the rankings. But, what is your proposal? For example, for the MS1000's in both tours, and since you are talking about the fact that Sakkari has won only one tournament in her life, do you propose that the tournament indeed gives 1000 points to the winner, but a considerable lower number for every other result? 200 points for the finalist, 75 for the SF's, and so on?
The rankings are the way that the seedings were corrected. We are old enough to remember how seedings, prior to the creation of the ATP and WTA, and the pro tours, were simply the whim of the tournament director. That had to go. So, what should be done with Sakkari? Or, you recently also mentioned Badosa. She has 3 total tournaments. Ons has three, Pegula has 1, Raducanu has 1, Kontaveit looks like a Steffi Graf in comparison, with 6, Aryna and Garbie have 10.
Serious question: what would you do with the rankings? Shorten the window of calculation to the last 6 months? (That would leave, sometimes during the year, to only TWO Slams being counted for your ranking). Further increase the points for winners, and drop them for the rest of the rounds? Would you include the number of tournaments you have won in your entire career, in some fancy calculation?
You say you would not rank Sakkari in the top 20. You mean you can name 20 players that are clearly better than her? Sure, I don't think she is the greatest player ever (except amongst Greek women), but it is not as if the woman is clueless out there.

Reducing points for rounds other than winner would disincentive top players from entering tournaments. The tour needs to incentive top players to play as much as possible.

I'm surprised anyone obsesses over the rankings. Every ranking system is a value system, reflective and not predictive. I guess the discussion is about the values. I don't have any problem with them. I don't think winning a title should be valued any more than it is. It's just one more match.

[ti-amie]

What is your opinion of FAA? Not only he has won only 1 tournament all his life, he is 1-9 in tournament finals. Yet, he is ranked 9th in the world.
You have been talking about the rankings. But, what is your proposal? For example, for the MS1000's in both tours, and since you are talking about the fact that Sakkari has won only one tournament in her life, do you propose that the tournament indeed gives 1000 points to the winner, but a considerable lower number for every other result? 200 points for the finalist, 75 for the SF's, and so on?
The rankings are the way that the seedings were corrected. We are old enough to remember how seedings, prior to the creation of the ATP and WTA, and the pro tours, were simply the whim of the tournament director. That had to go. So, what should be done with Sakkari? Or, you recently also mentioned Badosa. She has 3 total tournaments. Ons has three, Pegula has 1, Raducanu has 1, Kontaveit looks like a Steffi Graf in comparison, with 6, Aryna and Garbie have 10.
Serious question: what would you do with the rankings? Shorten the window of calculation to the last 6 months? (That would leave, sometimes during the year, to only TWO Slams being counted for your ranking). Further increase the points for winners, and drop them for the rest of the rounds? Would you include the number of tournaments you have won in your entire career, in some fancy calculation?
You say you would not rank Sakkari in the top 20. You mean you can name 20 players that are clearly better than her? Sure, I don't think she is the greatest player ever (except amongst Greek women), but it is not as if the woman is clueless out there.

I was very surprised to see FAA in the top ten to be honest.

Sakkari, from what I've seen, has thought herself out of a lot of her matches.

I don't know what to do to fix the rankings system but right now the rankings mean absolutely nothing with a few major exceptions of course.

[ponchi101]

That is where we disagree. The rankings are telling us a lot. They are telling us that, in both tours, the parity is immense.
In the WTA, you take out IGA, and everybody is basically a #2. In the men's, take out Novak, Rafa and Daniil, and everybody is also packed together. Seeing as Rafa and Noval will retire sooner than the rest, the ranking is telling us what we will see soon.

[Canucklehead]

I agree with ponchi101, there are many players on both sides of the tours that on any given day can defeat one another. Yes there is Novak, Rafa, and Daniil on the men's side who have an advantage and even Iga on the women's side, but beyond that it is anyone's match to win on any given day. Watching most of these matches, and trying to figure out some sort of continuity to it all is utterly impossible.