[gwnn]

75 points, cutting it rather fine but what a legend! It seems like he has a good chance of keeping it until the end of the year too. Fed lost in the 3rd round of Montreal and QF of Cincinnati last year, while Djokovic won Montreal and was runner-up in Cincinnati. In the US open Federer has to defend 'only' a semi-final appearance while Djokovic won it. The tricky part will be London of course but who would bet against him?

[billw55]

Do the Olympics even figure in the rankings? Would be a little weird since those points are undefendable.

The system has some oddities. Some years back there was a possible scenario whereby the #1 and #2 ranked players coming into the US open could meet in the final, with #1 winning, and as a result #2 pass #1 in the ranking. A strange result.

[gwnn]

billw55, on 2012-July-09, 07:04, said:

Do the Olympics even figure in the rankings? Would be a little weird since those points are undefendable.

The system has some oddities. Some years back there was a possible scenario whereby the #1 and #2 ranked players coming into the US open could meet in the final, with #1 winning, and as a result #2 pass #1 in the ranking. A strange result.

I don't know why that is strange. #2 did not pass #1 because he lost this year, he passed #1 because he won in the semis/quarters/whatever (and possibly because #3 lost early too).

[billw55]

gwnn, on 2012-July-09, 07:28, said:

I don't know why that is strange. #2 did not pass #1 because he lost this year, he passed #1 because he won in the semis/quarters/whatever (and possibly because #3 lost early too).

I suppose it isn't strange if you know and accept the inner works of the ranking system.

But simply intuitively: I outrank you, I defeat you in an elite event, winning it in the process, and as a result you now outrank me. That doesn't strike you as odd at all? And especially in a head to head sport such as tennis. In, say, golf or bridge, with plural opponents, this would not disturb me.

[gwnn]

The way you word it it sounds strange. But like I said: I do not outrank you as a result of you beating me. I would have outranked you even if I had beaten you. I outrank you after you beat me because through the last 52 weeks I had a better performance than you.

[billw55]

gwnn, on 2012-July-09, 08:36, said:

The way you word it it sounds strange. But like I said: I do not outrank you as a result of you beating me. I would have outranked you even if I had beaten you. I outrank you after you beat me because through the last 52 weeks I had a better performance than you.

I make no claim that "intuitively" and "logically airtight" are equivalent descriptors

It's more a matter of the fan/media perspective, thinking of such a match as a showdown to prove who is really the best right now. And then the ranks seem to contradict the result of that showdown.

Anyway none of this actually happened yesterday. What actually happened was entirely sensible, the Fed vanquished his foes and became #1. Few will now hesitate to name him the greatest of all time. I am one of the few though

[gwnn]

What if the #69 beat the #1? Should #69 be automatically be the world number one? Maybe you would like boxing more.

[TimG]

gwnn, on 2012-July-09, 08:36, said:

The way you word it it sounds strange. But like I said: I do not outrank you as a result of you beating me. I would have outranked you even if I had beaten you. I outrank you after you beat me because through the last 52 weeks I had a better performance than you.

It does seem strange to me that when you add a win to previous results your ranking can go down (that you can be passed by a player who played in the same event and did worse). I'm guessing this is because the 53-week old results are thrown out and the lower ranked player had a worse result thrown out. But, I would describe it as counter-intuitive that the winner of an event is passed in the rankings by someone who placed 2nd in the same event.

[Bbradley62]

billw55, on 2012-July-09, 07:04, said:

Do the Olympics even figure in the rankings? Would be a little weird since those points are undefendable.

The Olympics do count, but not as a major tournament. (Winners of the four grand slams get 2000 points, season-ending championships 1500, major Master Series (the next 9 biggest) get 1000 and Olympics get 750. There are somewhat frequently undefendable points when tournaments change dates or have other issues. What I find "unfair" about awarding points for the Olympics is that the selection criteria for participation includes the fact that only four men from any one country can play singles, so there are situations like the #5 Spanish player (Feliciano Lopez) who is ranked #17 in the world, is ineligible. This gives an advantage to those ranked just below him, who have an opportunity to gain points when he can't. (Yes, there is a lower-ranked tournament in Washington, DC running concurrently.) In total, 9 men are excluded from singles for this reason, five from Spain and four from France. However, in addition to the four singles players, countries are allowed (subject to rankings) to have up to two more players on their rosters, specifically to play doubles. Both France and Spain have given their fifth- and sixth-ranked players such doubles slots, so they will, naturally, not be in Wash, DC earning singles points.

[gwnn]

750 points eh. So Federer might lose his #1 ranking in three weeks! But I think he will win the olympics too! woo hoooo

[gwnn]

TimG, on 2012-July-09, 11:16, said:

It does seem strange to me that when you add a win to previous results your ranking can go down (that you can be passed by a player who played in the same event and did worse). I'm guessing this is because the 53-week old results are thrown out and the lower ranked player had a worse result thrown out. But, I would describe it as counter-intuitive that the winner of an event is passed in the rankings by someone who placed 2nd in the same event.

Yes, that's what is happening. It may seem strange at first sight but I don't think it is. This is not boxing. If player A had close to equal points to player B before a tournament even though last year player A did very bad in this tournament and player B won it, it means that player A had significantly outperformed player B the rest of the year (chances are that player A has beaten player B often, too). Add to this the different surfaces. The ATP rankings want to give equal weights to tournaments on all surfaces so you should not deprecate points - that means that during the clay-court season clay court specialists would be very high in the rankings and during hard-court season clay court specialists would be very low. Of course in practice you can see that the big 3 perform very well on all surfaces but we are not really talking about practice anymore

[billw55]

Bbradley62, on 2012-July-09, 16:05, said:

... Both France and Spain have given their fifth- and sixth-ranked players such doubles slots, so they will, naturally, not be in Wash, DC earning singles points.

I think it would make more sense to give the doubles slots to doubles players, rather than to singles players based on their rank. Their choice though.

[Aberlour10]

This ATP-Ranking system has been worked pretty good since 1973 but one of the major modifikations in there = "All opponents are equal"-rule sucked it IMO.
The former counting with extra bonus points for beating higher ATP ranked players was fair. Nowdays two players reach R16 and get the same points, despite of fact that one won vs Federer another vs MrNobody.

[kfay]

I saw a Lavazza coffee commercial after the final. I was kinda excited about it and pointed it out to a friend, who has no idea what bridge is. They didn't seem to care :-P. I've never had the coffee.

[gwnn]

kfay, on 2012-July-11, 08:32, said:

I saw a Lavazza coffee commercial after the final. I was kinda excited about it and pointed it out to a friend, who has no idea what bridge is. They didn't seem to care :-P. I've never had the coffee.

They care as much about bridge as you about tennis if you don't see how EPIC it is that Federer is number 1 again!

[gwnn]

Can't believe this was almost 5 years ago and now he's getting close to world #1 again. WTF. He improved his first 4 months by a mile and soon all the tournaments will be freerolls for him (he missed the entire season May+ 2016). Even if he just reaches 1 GS final and gets some ATP 500 titles, he can become world number 1, as long as one of Djoko/Murray don't hoard the balance (which I don't think they will).

[billw55]

gwnn, on 2017-April-02, 15:44, said:

Can't believe this was almost 5 years ago and now he's getting close to world #1 again. WTF. He improved his first 4 months by a mile and soon all the tournaments will be freerolls for him (he missed the entire season May+ 2016). Even if he just reaches 1 GS final and gets some ATP 500 titles, he can become world number 1, as long as one of Djoko/Murray don't hoard the balance (which I don't think they will).

Indeed, it is astonishing and unprecedented. I hope he doesn't play too many events. I would rather see him playing well a few times than burn out his (surely now more vulnerable) body.

Also I reread some of my old comments about the rankings. As a solution, I think it would make more sense to age out ranking points over time, rather than drop them all at once. Say, cut them in half after 8 months, in half again after 10, then drop them at one year. Or something like that.

[gwnn]

billw55, on 2017-May-08, 08:25, said:

Indeed, it is astonishing and unprecedented. I hope he doesn't play too many events. I would rather see him playing well a few times than burn out his (surely now more vulnerable) body.

Actually, in the meantime Nadal also got a couple of events under his belt!

RANKING		COUNTRY	PLAYER		AGE	POINTS	TOURN PLAYED	
1	 	SUI	Roger Federer	35	4,045	4
2	 	ESP	Rafael Nadal	30	3,735	7
3	 	SUI	Stan Wawrinka	32	1,590	6
4	 	AUT	Dominic Thiem	23	1,485	11
5	 	BEL	David Goffin 	26	1,460	9

Andy Murray has 1110 and Djokovic has 655.

Of course there are still lots of tournaments to play, but it will take a very dominant display from one of Djok/Murray (or Waw, of course), and a really bad showing overall by the two veterans to prevent one of Fedal from becoming #1 at the end of this year.

Quote

Also I reread some of my old comments about the rankings. As a solution, I think it would make more sense to age out ranking points over time, rather than drop them all at once. Say, cut them in half after 8 months, in half again after 10, then drop them at one year. Or something like that.

Yes that's one way of doing it. I think the Romanian Bridge Federation (and possibly others also?) halve the number of masterpoints after each year (it would be better for the weights to go to exactly 0 after a while, but yea). FIFA, although the raw data for their rankings is gibberish, also do something like this: results from the last 4 years weighted 100-75-50-25%.

[Zelandakh]

Another way of doing it would be to use Elo ratings and adjust the K factor to be very high for grand slams. That would result in much higher accuracy but would have the downside, from the Tours' perspectives, of removing much of the incentive to play more often.

[gwnn]

Elo ratings with some kind of penalty for inactivity, right? In chess, the only penalty for inactivity is an "i" next to the rating that can be taken away once you play even one rated game. Could be a fun math problem, how to do it. Maybe add a 'tournament' where you draw 9 1600's at the end of every year. Not sure.