The problem is that there’s no way to make them predictive across multiple tournaments, as long as the rankings are just a single list. It seems that Serena should be ranked higher in the majors, but she should probably be ranked lower in other tournaments. Serena is more likely to beat the top players than Safina is, but Serena is also more likely to lose to lower players, or at least lose to them in smaller tournaments.
There’s also the matchup problem, where you can have an A beats B, B beats C, C beats A situation, in which case one of the players has to be ranked above someone who beats them.
No one is always going to win who is ranked higher. But someone who is lower ranked beating someone who is higher ranked virtually all the time makes it clear the rankings are not predictive, n’est-ce pas?
I think they should do with the rankings what they do with chess. Rate the players, with the rating being based upon head to head results. My guess is that Serena would show up as higher than Dinara that way.
As for what Marley23 posted last about Premier events:
You can CALL it “premier” if you want, and try to use the carrot to entice players to come and play and treat it as such, but if you think that the Warsaw Open is a “premier event” that is worth extra for winning, well, all I can say is you’re likely a Madison Ave. dream.
I maintain: Serena Williams is the better player. She is better than Dinara Safina in the only way that is important: she beats her regularly. Venus Williams is also substantially better than Dinara Safina. This was readily apparent at Wimbledon in the semi-finals. If the rankings assert otherwise, then they should not be used as a predictor of outcome. If they are going to be used as a predictor of outcome, they should be modified so that someone who is winning major championships is ranked ahead of someone who is picking up the in-between stuff.
Whether or not I want to visit Warsaw (I don’t) the point is that it isn’t a minor tournament. The “Premier” thing isn’t just marketing, these are mandatory events for the top players. They’re high-priority events and draws most of the best players. (Safina didn’t win in Warsaw anyway. She won in Rome, Madrid, Los Angeles, Toronto and Tokyo, notorious jerkwater burgs all.) If I’m reading correctly, the five biggest Premier tournaments are mandatory, and the players are required to enter a certain number of the other tournaments.
A point everyone already agrees with.
They’re not a predictor of outcome, they’re a measure of performance over the last year. Serena Williams keeps winning the majors and getting mediocre to poor results in these events, while Safina does very well in the majors (reaching the finals and semis without winning) and also does very well at these events. Since there are only four major events and a greater number of other tourmanents, it’s not surprising that the math works out in Safina’s favor even though she is not the better player.
The rankings are not used as a predictor of outcome. If the organizers of the Grand Slam tournaments use the rankings to set seeding, that isn’t the ATP/WTA’s fault.
I just watched the Federer-Roddick final, and man, I am now a Roddick fan. In terms of elegance of playstyle, he looks like an oaf next to Federer, but the guy plays with his heart on the line.
I don’t know why people think Federer is such a great and classy speaker. His pre-game interview (shown on British TV), for instance, was embarrassing, with talk about how great he is, how he thinks he’s such a great role model, etc. He carries himself like someone who thinks he’s better than everyone and at the end of this one, doesn’t really give enough credit to an opponent who played just as well as him. A truly classy sportsman would emphasize the fact that the man who he’s dominated so thoroughly (19-2) actually did play well enough to beat him today, if not for the vagaries of fate.
However, while I’m not a huge fan of the person, Federer’s playstyle is probably the most pleasing for me to watch!
Really? I thought he played about as elegantly as Roger.
By the way, I think that Roger was not in fine form with his interviews/comments at Wimbledon. He generally does better, but not always. He seems like a pretty decent guy. Basically, he’s not a jerk, unlike some other “great” athletes.
Really really? I love Roddick, but an elegant style it is not. Can’t argue with the serve’s effectiveness, but it’s truncated and jerky. The backhand was surprisingly effective, but still not pretty. Federer by contrast is almost feline. I hear they play videos of his cross court backhand to manic depressives. Some of his forehands on the run made orphans cry. He’s not at his peak any more, but he still makes it look as if this is how tennis was meant to be played.
Complete tangent: I know someone who worked in the Seychelles for a couple of years, working 50% on ocean conservation, 50% taking tourists diving round coral. She went out one day with some couple, taking them snorkelling and wotnot, showing them the fish. She came back and her colleagues were all over her: “How was it?” “What were they like?” “What did they say?” “Were they nice?”
“They were completely normal,” she replies. “Why?”
It would have been far more satisfying for both me and Marley’s girlfriend if the response had been, ‘No it wasn’t. It was Quentin Tarantino and Roger Federer’s girlfriend’.
