gwnn Posted July 9, 2012 Report Share Posted July 9, 2012 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? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
billw55 Posted July 9, 2012 Report Share Posted July 9, 2012 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gwnn Posted July 9, 2012 Author Report Share Posted July 9, 2012 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). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
billw55 Posted July 9, 2012 Report Share Posted July 9, 2012 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gwnn Posted July 9, 2012 Author Report Share Posted July 9, 2012 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
billw55 Posted July 9, 2012 Report Share Posted July 9, 2012 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 ;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gwnn Posted July 9, 2012 Author Report Share Posted July 9, 2012 What if the #69 beat the #1? Should #69 be automatically be the world number one? Maybe you would like boxing more. :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TimG Posted July 9, 2012 Report Share Posted July 9, 2012 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bbradley62 Posted July 9, 2012 Report Share Posted July 9, 2012 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gwnn Posted July 10, 2012 Author Report Share Posted July 10, 2012 750 points eh. So Federer might lose his #1 ranking in three weeks! But I think he will win the olympics too! woo hoooo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gwnn Posted July 10, 2012 Author Report Share Posted July 10, 2012 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 :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
billw55 Posted July 10, 2012 Report Share Posted July 10, 2012 ... 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aberlour10 Posted July 10, 2012 Report Share Posted July 10, 2012 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kfay Posted July 11, 2012 Report Share Posted July 11, 2012 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gwnn Posted July 11, 2012 Author Report Share Posted July 11, 2012 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! :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gwnn Posted April 2, 2017 Author Report Share Posted April 2, 2017 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). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
billw55 Posted May 8, 2017 Report Share Posted May 8, 2017 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gwnn Posted May 8, 2017 Author Report Share Posted May 8, 2017 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. :o 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.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%. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zelandakh Posted May 9, 2017 Report Share Posted May 9, 2017 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gwnn Posted May 9, 2017 Author Report Share Posted May 9, 2017 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StevenG Posted May 9, 2017 Report Share Posted May 9, 2017 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.The primary purpose of the ranking system is to make players play as much as possible. Ranking points get you seeded, and they get you into the main draw rather than qualification (and I assume they get you into qualification rather than the ITF circuit). Creating some sort of plausible rating is essential, otherwise the rankings would be regarded with derision, but that's certainly not what they are for. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zelandakh Posted May 9, 2017 Report Share Posted May 9, 2017 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.The ELO system that is used for German table tennis ratings has a penalty for inactivity built in. It kicks in after a year and there are further penalties every 6 months thereafter. It would not be difficult to implement a similar method for tennis. The trick is of course to balance inflation and deflation as much as possible. The DTTV achieve this by giving out free bonus points to junior players; the ATP and WTF would presumably need to find an alternative, possibly just a straight points bonus for winning grand slam matches in addition to the higher K factor. Elo ratings are basically flexible enough to be adapted to most circumstances so I am confident that would work if the tennis authorities decided they wanted a ratings system with a more solid mathematical basis. My guess is that they are well aware of this but feel the need to encourage their top stars onto the circuit a few extra times a year is more important. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
billw55 Posted May 9, 2017 Report Share Posted May 9, 2017 ELO rates each individual match separately. The existing ranking system awards points for placement in an event, which is not the same thing. So that bring up two questions: do we want to deprioritize actually winning events, and do we want to consider quality of opponent(s)? For example, player A might go 5-1 at Wimbledon, defeating a few top players on the way to losing in the semifinal. Meanwhile player B might get a couple walkovers and a fortunate draw to win the event at 5-0, playing no top-10 players. ELO might well give player A better result for the event. Is that something we want to happen? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gwnn Posted May 9, 2017 Author Report Share Posted May 9, 2017 ELO = Electronic Light Orchestra. Elo = a rating system named after a Hungarian-American dude (Élő, which funnily means "alive"). gwnn = obnoxious. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WellSpyder Posted May 9, 2017 Report Share Posted May 9, 2017 ELO = Electronic Light Orchestra.Darned computers seem to be taking over everything! In my day it was Electric Light Orchestra..... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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