Why Do We Always Have To Bash Tennis Players for Their High Ranking?

By
at Internationaled.org

Published: March 25, 2010

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It is really strange isn't it?

No sooner has the 19-year old Dane, Caroline Wozniacki, risen to a career-high second in the Women's rankings before she is bashed by more or less the entire panel of tennis experts (see Steven Tignor, James Martin on tennis.com, and a Reuters article on Eurosport to name but a few. In all fairness, Martin provided an excellent analysis of her counter-pouncing style and its limitations).

It seems that almost all of of us tennis fans, pundits, and experts have an almost irresistible urge to analyze the rankings. Is this player as good as his or her ranking suggests? It is really deserved? Or has he or she just been lucky? I'm no better myself and have done my fair share of analysis.

But please hear me out on why overanalysing the rankings may not be the brightest idea in the world.

First of all, because the players don't have random rankings. They have the ranking they have as a result of how well they've played within the last year. Nothing more, nothing less (injuries omitted).

So when we make our value judgements that player X is really much, much better than  player Y, despite the fact that player Y is ranked second and player X is eight, we are really just ignoring the plain fact that within the last year, player X has been able to secure more points than player Y, because X performed better. 

Obviously, in the case of injuries (or the two Belgian returning without a rank they have now), the argument may have some fairness to it, but still here we are left with the question of whether these recently injured or retired players are really better at their current level than the player holding the position in the ranking they were "supposed" to have.

Yes, the two Belgians can and will beat most of the other players, when playing at their top-level. But they haven't shown that consistency yet. And yes, a perfectly fit Nadal is one of the...
Article Source: Bleacher Report - Tennis

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