bcslice said:
I think my real assertion here is that the WTA Tour rankings are bunk.
Agree on that one...
I acknowledge that the system rewards consistency, players who play often, etc. But how many of you guys on this board feel that Lindsay Davenport is the best player in women's tennis? Is Sharapova really the second best player? How would you re-rank the women on the WTA?
And there's the problem - there's *nobody* in the women's game that's really a legitimate #1 right now.
Davenport and Sharapova and Mauresmo - they've done consistently well in the slams, gotten to the later rounds, the semis and quarters and finals. They've won a bunch of other tournaments and gotten to a bunch of other finals.
Compare that to, say, Serena. Over the past 12 months, ALL that she has done is win the Australian open. At the end of last year she also had three or four good tournaments.
Justine Henin - similar deal. French Open champion. Won several of the leadup tournaments to the French Open, on clay. I think she still has the points from the olympics. But she simply hasn't played much - she missed most of last summer/fall, and she lost early at wimbledon.
And then Venus. Which is again a similar story. A Grand Slam win - a couple of other nice tourneys here and there, and then nothing.
Kuznetsova - same.
Looking at their records, you see patches of great play, and then nothing at all of note for months on end. (Or just nothing at all for months on end, since they've been in and out with injuries.)
And then you look at Davenport's record. I look down the page - quarterfinal, final, final, final, win, win, final, win, win, final - month after month. and so on, basically throughout the year. I haven't looked at Sharapova's record, but I'd wager that it looks the same. Probably Mauresmo's too.
How do you make a ranking from that?
If you judge the level of play of the top players by week, I'd wager you get something like the following:
Davenport and Sharapova have been steady at the top. At any given week, they're either the #1 and #2 players, or maybe the #2/#3 players. Whereas the others mentioned, Henin and Venus and Serena, they each rise to being effectively the best player in the world for the span of a couple of weeks, and then vanish down into the depths of the "imaginary weekly rankings" for a while, and then suddenly play like the world's best player again for a week.
Obviously this is tricky considering that many players have been injured, out of shape, etc.
Or just in general "inconsistent."
I just think it's silly that Dementieva is a two-time Slam finalist and that Myskina is a Slam champion.
Can you imagine either one making it to a Slam final again?
Just a note - that sentiment seems totally out of place here. We're discussing the ranking system, aren't we? Yes, it's definitely strange, but Dementieva and Myskina took advantage of a year where the top players didn't play their best tennis, there's nothing wrong with that. If the top players aren't playing well enough to win the big tournaments, then someone's got to step up and take their spot, and that's what Myskina and Dementieva did. What does this have to do with the grub with the rankings?
I'm picking only on those two because I DO believe that Sharapova and Kuznetsova will most likely return to a Slam final.
I certainly agree with that though ;-)
The rest of the stuff - well, in my mind it makes sense when I think of it this way.
The four big tournaments - they measure who was the best player during those two weeks.
The rankings - they measure who was the best player over the course of the year. They give significant weight to results in other tournaments because, well, there are serious matches being played there, the fields are strong, and so a win at other tournaments does indicate skill.
Now, generally the rankings coincide with the major winners because, since the majors are the biggest tournaments, the top players will try try their best to win them, and since they're at the top then that's expected to generally happen. Also, of course, the majors are a significant indicator of who really is at the top.
But the majors aren't the only tournaments - winning a major isn't enough to suddenly become one of the top four players in the world, it needs to be backed up by, well, top-4 play throughout the rest of the year too.
That said, I do think the system needs to be changed, but I'm more basing that off of back when Henin held TWO grand slam titles and was still, for a while, second to Kim Clijsters; that seems excessive.
But at the moment, there really aren't *any* players that are truly deserving of the top spots - the players that are best throughout most of the year choke at the majors, and those that won in the majors vanish off of the radar screen for long periods of time. The ranking system is bound to give screwy results, which is what it does...
