RealGM

I wasn't really aware of how they are measured, i always thought that each tournament depending on the round had the same amount of points for everyone.

but now i find out that the points are handed depending on the player's performance the year before. is that fair?

they showed in sportscenter the points nadal has to defend and the pts federer has to defend and it's easier for nadal to achieve the #1 is federer screws up, specially if he doesn't win the us open.

Infact the break down goes more like this:

Grandslams : 1000 pts
Master Cup: 550 - 750 pts
Masters series - 500 pts
Int'l gold series - 250 - 300 pts
Int'l series - 175 - 250 pts
Challenger series - 50 to 100 pts
Futures - 12 to 24 pts.

I really don't understand why the points carry over after a calender year when the rankings are for a 52 week period only.

I think they are going to modify it further in 2009 with sanctions on top players who miss the 1000 pt events.

Tennis actually has two different ranking systems, in a similar way to golf. In golf there is the money list which is based on the calendar year, and then there is the World Ranking which covers a two-year period and determines eligibility for events like the Ryder Cup.

Tennis has something called the ATP Race, which is a calendar-year system used to determine who plays in the year-end finals. Nadal is clearly #1 in this right now. But entry to tournaments and seeding is based on the Entry Ranking, which covers the previous 1-year period. Federer still has a small lead here.

I agree with this system, because it would be stupid if some no-name player was the top seed at the Australian Open in January because he won a small tournament near the start of the season, and Federer and Nadal were unseeded because they hadn't even played yet (which is often the case for the better players early in the season).

The reason Federer still has the #1 ranking is that his performance in the latter part of 2007 was quite a bit better than Nadal's. If Nadal can play better through the rest of the summer and the fall, he can grab the #1 ranking almost regardless of what Federer does.

wouldn't it be more fair to just have the points awarded and the ones with the most points are at the top of the ranking?

BlackMamba wrote:wouldn't it be more fair to just have the points awarded and the ones with the most points are at the top of the ranking?

I think you missed what he was saying about Australian Open rankings. To put it another way: When ranking players for a January tournament, it would be worthless to go only by results from the past couple weeks because those results actually correlate less with Australian Open results than do results from majors in the past year. Hence, the best way to rank players is based on what they've done over the past year.

Why the second system? There really is no second system. At the end of the calendar year, the two ratings look identical. The "race" rating is just a split published because people find it interesting and informative.