Serena Williams on Friday with Jonathan Ross, three days before Wimbledon started and less than a week before losing to Jill Craybas in the third round.
Ross: You're number four in the world at the moment.
SW: Am I?
Ross: You're seeded number four, I believe.
SW: You know, I don't keep up with the rankings. If I'm not number one, it's like, whatever. I consider myself the best still. I consider myself number one.
In contrast to the singles (and also to the women's doubles at WTA YECs), the YEC doubles draw is filled with all top eight teams. The ATP may have declared war on doubles in other ways, but the YECs give doubles their proper due and play out a full round robin among the eight teams and follow the same format as the singles.
It seems clear from the standings that Paes-Zimonjic will go through to the semis; we'll pick Bryan/Bryan to go with them; in the other group we'll pick Black/Ulyett and Bjorkman/Minyi despite their loss to Huss/Moodie (who are, despite their lack of fame, the Wimbledon champions).
Given the changes the ATP is trying to implement, this may be the last year that doubles survives in anything like its original form, so if you have the chance to see any of these matches, best enjoy it.
wg
As injury-wracked as the WTA year-end championships were (and note that I managed to choose wrong in almost every match I called), the ATP YECs have been arguably worse.
The women were missing three of the four Grand Slam champions, Henin-Hardenne with a hamstring injury and both Williams sisters because they weren't ranked high enough to qualify (after missing much of the year through injury and/or apathy). But the YECs still had seven of the top eight -- everyone turned out for the YECs who qualified other than JHH. It was *Philadelphia* that bore the brunt of player withdrawals, at least some of which were almost certainly partially due to the players realizing they didn't need the points to qualify.
The men's YECs are down to only one of the top five, they're missing two of the year's three Grand Slam champions, and they're flying the 14th ranked player (Thomas Johansson) in from Monte Carlo to be an alternate in case anyone more pulls out. The worst, I think, was Agassi -- even if he was injured, this is the third time he's lost a match or two, then cried injury and gone home. Of course, he's 36, and it's almost impossible that he *doesn't* have some injury that's bothering him at any given time, but the pattern is striking. Safin's missed half a year, hard to argue with that; Nadal at least came out on court and apologized; Roddick always looked like a candidate for back problems the way he sticks his ass out when he serves; and Hewitt...well, I know his wife's having a baby, and one must approve of his desire to be by her side...but...oh, well, where's Concorde when you need it?
The YECs always looked like being Federer's tournament in any case. Roddick and Hewitt haven't beaten him on any surface in more than two years, Safin (who beat him in Australia) hasn't played in months, and Nadal is arguably still learning to play on faster surfaces (and said before he withdrew that he didn't like the Shanghai surface). Coria lost all his matches last year, and was predictably going to repeat the performance this year (and has so far); the alternates (Gaudio, Puerta) are clay-court players.
Of the draw, the players you'd expect to make the semis:
Federer
Ljubicic (Nalbandian's a versatile player, but Ljubicic has had a better record at the beginning and end of this year)
Davydenko
probably Gonzalez
Gonzalez is a tough pick: he's got a better game for fast courts than Gaudio or Puerta (both of whom are clay-courters even though Puerta can serve and volley), but he comes in at the disadvantage of not being prepared and having only two matches to play, both of which he has to win to qualify for the semis. But it's hard to choose against him, because of the surface.
Final picks: Federer vs Lubicic
To win: Federer.
Going back to the injury problems (and bear in mind that Federer only a few weeks ago was on crutches with an ankle injury he's apparently been able to rehab in time): the players keep saying that the season is too long and too brutal and that their bodies can't take it. Clearly *something* important has changed just in the last ten, maybe even five, years -- players got injured in the 1980s and 1990s, too, but not on this scale and in this quantity. There are lots of reasons that have been frequently mooted why this happens: the preponderance of hard courts, both on the tour and as training grounds for young players; the age at which kids start to play intensively now; the pace of the game; the schedule. But I think the overgrowth of money in the game is also a contributing factor, and one no one is talking about. When players *had* to have long careers if they hoped to retire in any comfort, they were forced to take better care of their bodies and think long-term. Now that you can be more than set for life with one big win (Sharapova's 2004 Wimbledon win netted her $21 million a year in endorsements, by most estimates), the rule seems to be to go for broke, cash in, and then you don't have to care what the promoters or anyone else needs. The exception is, of course, Federer, who genuinely seems to care about playing for history. But he *is* the exception, and he's also unusual in apparently limiting his off-court commitments.
wg
Have to pick Pierce, I think, against Mauresmo in the final. Hopefully will be a good match with no injury dramas or choking.
More shame for the WTA: utter failure to promote the doubles, which features some terrific players. Raymond/Stosur invisibly beat Martinez/Ruano Pascual last night, and Black/Stubbs beat Likhovtseva/Zvonareva. (Black actually qualified with two partners, an achievement which has been utterly ignored; Huber, with whom she won Wimbledon, got injured, and she's played with Stubbs ever since). The number one ranking is up for grabs between, I think, Black and Samantha Stosur, and these four players will wind up the top four, but I'm not sure in what order. Great drama -- and should be a great match -- if the WTA cared to exploit it. Why not sell doubles by offering it to broadcasters free? Why don't broadcasters show it to fill in time instead of reruns of the match you just saw? Shame rating: 5.
Eurosport went on last night to blot its copybook further by not going back to show Pierce/Davenport after Mauresmo/Sharapova were finished. Shame rating: 3.
wg
Only two of last night's matches were competitive -- and while it's understandable that Sharapova might want to save her energy for tonight's semifinal (and possibly tomorrow night's final), it's an insult to the paying fans and a violation of the tour rules to give less than your best effort. We'll never know for sure, of course, if she tanked or if she was just off and Petrova was playing well, but a lot of people who saw the match think she tanked, and I certainly thought she would have preferred to win it but didn't really care all that much. She's 18. That's pretty young to be jaded enough to be that calculating.
Pierce, on the other hand, fought her way back from a set down against Mauresmo, and Clijsters, having lost her first two matches, seemed to feel it was worth the effort stomping on Dementieva not to lose all three.
For tonight:
Mauresmo over Sharapova (why: well, Mauresmo has the kind of varied game and low slices that trouble Sharapova, and she doesn't seem to get as nerve-wracked at the YECs as at the Grand Slams. But mostly it's wishful: I'm tired of Sharapova's antics, and I'm therefore making an irrational prediction.)
I was going to pick Davenport for the final, and then discovered that I had the semis backwards, and Eurosport joined the match for the second set tiebreak, which is poor service after a week of all-night live coverage. Pierce is just having a wonderful run.
The appalling YEC Web site (don't go there unless you love Flash) deserves special censure for making it impossible for anyone to understand the closing stages of the round robin. Many of the TV commentators and fans were confused by what the players had to do to win their groups, and this was entirely because the information about how the standings are calculated and when and whether the sets (or the head-to-heads) count is simply not there. Who ever heard of a major competition where the basic information about SCORING was unavailable? This is ridiculous. It's a *terrible* way to market the sport, utterly alienates fans, and displays contempt for all involved. The clear implication is that the event's promoters think nothing matters except who's playing. Get rid of these idiots and let them put on exhibitions instead of ruining fan interest in what ought to be one of the five biggest events of the tennis year on the women's side.
Shame ratings of the day:
Sharapova: 1
WTA Tour, for the YEC Web site: 4 (well, it *is* only a Web site)
Eurosport, for skipping almost all of the first semi: 3.
wg
Last night decided the semifinalists, but tonight's matches are not completely meaningless. For the two winners in each group -- Davenport and Sharapova, Pierce and Mauresmo -- it determines their position in the final group standings and therefore determines who plays whom in the semis. (#1 from each group plays #2 from the other group).
I got three of the four semifinalists wrong. In retrospect, Sharapova was obvious (I went for Petrova), and Pierce should have been predictable also because she's done consistently so well since May (two GS finals, two tournament wins). Mauresmo was less easy to predict, but she had made up for her two early-round indoor losses by winning Philadelphia, and was primed and ready. Whereas, Dementieva was exhausted from the effort of qualifying for LA, and Petrova is not as consistent as the four who will go through (plus looked ill during the early part of last night's match). The real surprise was Clijsters, who won this event in 2002 and 2003 (DNP in 2004), and who seemed to carry all before her whenever she played this year. Clijsters has complained of being tired from jet lag, which I find baffling in such an experienced traveler. But it's another reason why LA is a bad choice of venue for the YECs -- the fall indoors circuit is all in Europe.
For the players who won't make the semis, the matches still matter in terms of ranking points (and money, if that matters now).
I'd expect things to wind up thusly tonight:
- Sharapova to defeat Petrova and wind up #1 in her group
- Clijsters to defeat Dementieva
- Pierce- /Mauresmo, any damn thing could happen. Pierce is playing the best tennis of her life, has her sights set on becoming #1, and historically has the better career. Pierce in three, despite Mauresmo's greater variety.
One of the interesting things about this round robin format, though, is that the final could see a replay of Davenport vs. Sharapova, which so far has been the best match of the tournament. (It pains me to say, since both are baseline bashers.)
.wg
The draw is out, much earlier than the women's was.
Red: Roger Federer, Guillermo Coria, Ivan Ljubicic, David Nalbandian.
Gold: Rafael Nadal, Andre Agassi, Nikolay Davydenko, Gaston Gaudio.
Federer, Agassi, and Nadal all have injuries (ligaments in foot, hip, left knee, respectively) that may yet take them out of the tournament, though as of now they're expected to play. (Rumors on rec.sport.tennis are that Puerta, the first alternate, has been told to get on a plane because Federer is still in pain, though I don't know how much credibility to give it.) If you're wondering where some of the other famous players are, Hewitt is home watching his wife get ready to produce a baby; Safin's left knee is still recuperating; and Roddick withdrew yesterday with a bad back and is replaced by Nalbandian. Like the women's draw at LA, it looks somewhat depleted, in part because the players who have moved up, especially Coria and Gaudio, are primarily clay-courters who aren't expected to do much on a faster surface.
If those in the above draw all play and are in reasonably good shape, I'd expect the following in the semis:
Federer
Ljubicic
Nadal
Agassi
A lot of people would love to see a Federer/Nadal final, and Nadal beat Agassi in the Canadian Open final back in August. If Shanghai is a faster surface, Agassi could well reverse that result here, though it would certainly be fitting if the two dominant players of the year finished it by facing off.
Either way, I'd expect Federer to win unless his injury becomes a factor. He has said (before the ankle ligament injury) that defending his Masters title is one of his priorities for 2005.
wg
Last night's matches were sort of hum-drum, even though Mauresmo got herself a good win against Clijsters, whom she hadn't beaten since the US Open R4 2002. Clijsters led their head-to-head 8-2. Pierce and Davenport had straightforward and (now) expected victories over Dementieva and Schnyder respectively.
My revised prediction is that Davenport will win all three of her round-robin matches and will probably play Mauresmo in the semis, and that Pierce will go through to play...well, probably Sharapova in her semis. And the final now looks like Davenport - Pierce. Though we've seen little of Sharapova or Petrova so far.
Tonight's matches:
- Schnyder vs Petrova (Petrova - Schnyder is playing well, but can be overpowered. Although she may want revenge for her loss to Petrova in the Linz final)
- Davenport vs Sharapova (Davenport - when she's playing well, Davenport is just too good and too experienced for Sharapova, who's had a good and consistent year but not a great one)
- Mauresmo vs Dementieva (Mauresmo - a rerun of the Philadelphia final, where Dementieva threatened but Mauresmo triumphed with a more consistent serve and more variety)
btw, if there is a Web site worse than the WTATour Championships one, I hope never to see it. For a site promoting an event it's utterly dismal: everything's in Flash with no alternative, the event's history is nowhere to be found (past champions?), the standings are not completely shown (if you look at the main pages, it looks like only match wins count -- but sets count, too, if it comes down to the wire), and the promoterst take so little interest in doubles that they haven't even bothered to list the four teams that have qualified. It is truly dismal even as pure marketing (although of a piece with the WTA tournament held in LA in the summer), and it's no surprise that the event in its three-year run in LA has never gotten any traction or become the magnitude even it shoudl be (as Mauresmo said last week in Philly). What a continuingly dismal shame it is that the Championships (which, btw, the players call simply "the Masters") was forced to move from Madison Square Garden, where it had all those things and atmosphere besides.
wg
The draw is out.
Green group: Davenport - Sharapova - Schnyder - Petrova
Black group: Clijsters - Mauresmo - Pierce - Dementieva
Semifinal predictions: Davenport vs Mauresmo; Clijsters vs. Petrova
(Why: Davenport and Clijsters historically have their best results indoors; Mauresmo and Petrova have just played matches in Philadelphia on the same surface, so they're ready.)
Final predictions: Davenport vs. Clijsters
(Why: as above. Mauresmo tends to choke in the clinch, and although Petrova has improved her results this year and ought to have the weapons to beat anybody, she tends to self-destruct at inopportune moments, and one title seems unlikely to change that completely overnight.)
Winner: Clijsters
(Why: all else being equal, the better mover wins. Davenport and Clijsters are both great on indoor surfaces, both hit hard, serve well, and can move into the net and put away volleys. Davenport has the edge in power and on the serve. But Clijsters has a big edge in movement.)
Tonight:
Clijsters vs Pierce: Clijsters and Pierce both won the last tournaments they played, and both have had a great year (Pierce: FO final, US final, won San Diego and Moscow); Clijsters: won US, Indian Wells, Miami, coming back from a year of injuries to #2 in the world). Clijsters in straights.
Sharapova vs Schnyder: both pulled out of Philadelphia with injuries (Schnyder - left hand; Sharapova right thumb strain). Schnyder beat Sharapova in Rome on clay, but Sharapova likes faster surfaces. Sharapova in two.
Davenport vs Petrova: two more Philadelphia pull-outs (Davenport with flu; Petrova bruised her heel in the quarterfinals). Petrova should be on a roll having won her first title in Linz a couple of weeks ago, but Davenport historically has had her best results indoors and on hard courts. Davenport in straights.
wg
As almost nobody knows because the WTA has not issued an official announcement or explanation, the ranking system is about to change for 2006. In brief, quality points (points for who you beat) will be eliminated, and players' rankings willl be based solely on round points (points for the round you reach and the level of the tournament you reach it at -- eg, the quarter-final at a Grand Slam is worth a great deal more than a quarter-final at a small tournment in Bangkok). We do not yet know what the round points table will look like, or exactly how it will affect which players. The players who stand to lose most are people whose rankings depend on a few big wins over high-ranked players rather than going deep into the draw every week at larger tournaments. The consequences in brief are likely to be:
- injured players making a comeback, young players just coming up, and older top players who play a limited schedule are likely to rise more slowly and/or stay lower ranked.
- mid-ranked players will have to balance whether a round or two at a big event (where there are more high-ranked players to beat them in the first round) is likely to be worth more or less to them than, say, a semifinal or final (or title) at a smaller one with a weaker draw.
- it will be possible for players with packed schedules to rise to a high ranking without ever beating anyone of significance.
- it will do nothing to address the most serious problem caused *in part* by the last changes to the rankings system, the escalating number of serious player injuries.
This change is the latest in a series of changes that have progressively made the rankings more and more meaningless. The players have only limited input: the women's tour is governed by a council that is approximately 1/3 tournament promoters, 1/3 WTA people, and roughly 1/3 players. More below to explain why these changes have been and will continue to be destructive to the long-term interests of the sport..
Under the new system, tournaments like Philadelphia this week, where most of the top stars entered withdrew (Lindsay Davenport (flu), Venus Williams (injury), Maria Sharapova (right thumb strain), Patty Schnyder (injury), all pulled out; Nadia Petrova gave her semifinal opponent, Elena Dementieva, a walkover when she bruised her heel in the quarter-final), will award the same points to the winner for playing one match against a top-ten player as if the winner had played through a full draw and beaten three top-ten players. The toughest tournaments on the tour to win in the last few years have not necessarily been the Grand Slams but events like Filderstadt or San Diego, where oiften every player in the draw is in the top 25 and there are no days off between matches.
Changes to the ranking system are decided by the board that governs women's tennis -- tennis has the most byzantine politics of probably any sport -- and players have limited input though they do have some. Player representation to the board (according to what Cara Black told me for Daily Tennis on Thursday) is made up of one from the top ten, one from 10-20, one from 20-50, and one from 50-100. There have been many changes in recent years, which rankings guru Robert Waltzman sums up thusly:
Until 1995: Divisor, minimum 12
1996: Divisor, minimum 14
1997: Additive, everything counts
1998: Additive, best 18. Which infamously gave us Hingis winning
the Grand Slam and not being #1, so that gave us
1999: Best 12 for doubles
2001: Best 17/Best 11 for doubles
2002: Slam Point Inflation
2006: Elimination of quality points
There are a couple of reasons why the changes are stupid.
1) one of the things that keeps fans addicted to a sport is being able to make historical comparisons. Every time you change the ranking system you lose continuity. Of course, Roger Federer would be numberr one for 2005 in any ranking system ever devised, but is he more or less dominant than Pete Sampras in 1995? Changing the rankings robs the game of its historical statistics.
2) Increasingly, the ranking system is not designed to do what probably most people think a ranking system is for, namely to identify who the best players are and seed tournaments so the best matches will be late in the events. The ranking system now is aimed more at controlling player behavior so they play enough of the right events to keep the promoters and WTA execs happy. As the Grand Slams have grown in importance and economic clout (they are the one part of the game that really makes money), recent changes to the ranking system have attempted to ensure that a Grand Slam winner would be at the top. These efforts have failed for the simple reason that you cannot increase the points available at Grand Slams without rewarding players who, say, make all four semi-finals more richly than someone who wins one title and vanishes for the rest of the year (like Serena Williams in 2005).
3) Being required to play more -- along with the increased amount of hard court play and the younger age at which players start training and practicing on a professional schedule -- is taking a terrible toll in player injuries. Kournikova and Hingis, two of the biggest recent stars, retired with back and foot problems before they were 22; Clijsters is planning to retire at 24; and the most dominant players of recent years, Venus and Serena Williams and Justine Henin-Hardenne, all hd one or two great years and then vanished for a year with injuries and/or illness, never regaining their full health.
3) Most of the time, the WTA seems to be copying, a few years later, whatever the ATP does. (In fact, the current WTA Tour CEO is the former ATP Tour COO.) Why? Why copy something that doesn't work?
4) Because the top few marquee names are now so wealthy so fast, the tours cannot control them with fines, bonus money, contracts, or begging. The only hold they have is ranking points. If lesser players can get to the top of the rankings by playing more, the belief is clearly that the top players can be pushed to defend themselves by also playing more, which is what the tour wants.This is increasingly unlikely to work either, because endorsement money has is less and less tied to a player's actual on-court achievements and more to her personality and looks.Increasingly, the number one ranking is something players want to achieve once, but care less about keeping than winning Grand Slam titles. In the 1980s, a player who wanted to retire in comfort had to think long-term and play and win as many events as possible; now, Sharapova can win Wimbledon once and make $21 million a year in endorsements. How long does she need to play?
The WTA says it's been running dummy runs to show the players and that the rankings aren't that different under the two systems (and the new one is administratively simpler). The thing is, small differences can be big on the ground. eg, it doesn't sound like a big deal to be #33 instead of #32, but it's the difference between being seeded or unseeded at the Australian Open.
If the round points table stays the same (it probably won't), here are what the rankings would look like right now if you just subtract everyone's quality points. Bear in mind, though, that players change their schedules to play to the ranking system, so it really doesn't reflect what will happen or what would have happened on the ground.
Estimated rank - Player name - WTA rank
1 - Lindsay Davenport - 1
2 - Maria Sharapova - 3
3 - Kim Clijsters - 2 (US Open champion)
4 - Amelie Mauresmo - 4
5 - Mary Pierce - 5
6 - Parry Schnyder - 8
7 - Nadia Petrova - 9
8 - Justine Henin-Hardenne - 6 (French Open champion)
9 - Venus Williams - 7 (Wimbledon champion)
10 - Elena Dementieva - 10
11 - Serena Williams (11) (Australian Open champion)
12 - Anstasia Myskina - 12
13 - Svetlana Kuznetsova - 15
14 - Nathalie Dechy - 13
15 - Francesca Schiavone - 14
16 - Daniela Hantuchova - 18
17 - Elena Likhovtseva - 17
18 - Nicole Vaidisova - 19
19 - Dinara Safina - 20
20 - Ana Ivanovic - 16
21 - Ana-Lena Groenefeld - 21
22 - Flavia Pennetta - 23
23 - Jelena Jankovic - 22
24 - Tatiana Golovin - 24
25 - Maria Kirlenko - - 25
wg
In Nadia Petrova's second round match against Yaroslava Shvedova (playing only her second WTA-level match) on Thursday at Philadelphia, Shvedova had a point for 3-1, and Petrova hit a forehand down the line that was clearly going out until...
...the ball hit the *netpost*, which changed its direction, knocking it sideways back toward the court. It flew almost all the way across the court and bounced inside the far sideline. Shvedova did this amazing little spiral to change direction and damn near got to the ball, which was amazing enough by itself because she was at the far forehand corner when she started and had to turn around and belt all the way to the sideline near the net on the backhand side.
Never seen anything like it. Neither, when interviewed afterwards, had Petrova.
wg
I've had it in mind to do this for some time, probably at least a couple of years. And if I'd started then you'd have a lot more to read now. At least the tennis world hasn't gotten any saner since then.
As I type this, the 2005 tennis season is coming to an end. For the women, this week are the Philadelphia and Quebec City tournaments, and next week is a challenger (low-level tournament) in Pittsburgh and the year-end Championships in LA. The men are currently finishing up in Paris, and then play their year-end championships the week after next. It may seem a funny time to start a site like this but the idea is that by the time the 2006 seasons opens, a day or two before New Year's, there'll be stuff to see.
Welcome.
wg