TENNIS RANKINGS MADE EASIER TO UNDERSTAND

One of the reasons football (or soccer as called in the USA) is the most followed sport worldwide is the easiness in understanding it. What happens with tennis is completely the opposite starting with the big number of lines in relation to the space, the complicated way of counting it, the display of the scores on TV, among some other things.

The ATP World Tour has never been the most followed in sports one of the inconveniences the tour used to have, and was changed in 2009 when many adjustments were made to the system, was that every tournament gave different amount of points and they counted for two different rankings. One, “The Race” used to determine who the best player of the year was based on the number of points he won throughout the year, every player would start at zero at the beginning of the year, the best 8 players would qualify for the Tennis Masters Cup, a round robin tournament. The events that were counted were the best five results of the year, Grand Slams and Master Series events. The second, the ATP Entry Ranking, which used a year to date ranking that, determined the qualification for entry and seeding, the period consisting on the past 52 weeks was considered and points were accumulated.

Some tennis players were highly ranked in the ATP rankings, but were not in the Race. Some, the best, would only participate in the Grand Slams and the Master Series they would be those who had the best results, but played a limited amount of weeks. People who followed the sport would notice how every week the same players would be in the small tournaments and did not advance as much in the big ones. Even the players did not understand as much the rules in which the ranking was based.

In an effort to promote the sport and gather more followers, the ITF and ATP made some of the complex rules easier to understand. As part of the changes that came in 2009 for the world of tennis a new rankings system was introduced merging “the Race” and the rankings into the South African Airways ATP Rankings.  It changed the name of the tournaments and they now reflect in their classification the number of points they give to the winner, 1000, 500 or 250.

The strategy followed has certainly benefited those of us who are close to the sport and enjoy having complete understanding on what goes on inside the Tour, and made some more fans along the way because it is easier to explain to non-fans.

Written by: Alejandra Diaz Valdes

http://www.atpworldtour.com/Rankings/Rankings-FAQ.aspx#race