Talk About Tennis 2.0

You are not paying any price. I started my post with a smiley.
I said that we were entering an era of parity in the ATP, with the demise of the Big 3, a couple of years ago. Well, the data say I was wrong. 7 of the last 8 slams have been won by Sinner or Alcaraz, with the 8th being won by Novak. So, my parity in the ATP is only true if you exclude the top two guys.
In the WTA, the parity is a bit more frequent. Sabalenka has reached the last three slam finals, winning one. She is the top player and even then, she can't win them all. The slams are being won by several players, and with certain frequency, you get a winner out of nowhere. if the field wins about 25% of the slams, to me that means the field is very open.
This is not the dictatorship of Serena/Graf/Martina/Chris.
And the thing is that for almost 20 years, "anything can happen" or "anyone can win" was patently not true. In the ATP, it was R/R/N 90% of the time. In the WTA, it was Serena. Now it is not (WTA, again). That is what the data tell me.

The rankings are a mathematical reality based on the rules set out by the tours. They are not predictive, they reflect past performance, they determine tournament entry, and tournament seeding. That's their importance to the sport. Once the draw is set it's about matchups, surfaces, playing conditions, injuries, and the unforeseen, and that's what determines who wins. We point to changes in the rankings because the rankings eventually reflect the things that happen on the court, but it is a lagging indicator.

skatingfan wrote: ↑Mon Jun 09, 2025 10:41 pm The rankings are a mathematical reality based on the rules set out by the tours. They are not predictive, they reflect past performance, they determine tournament entry, and tournament seeding. That's their importance to the sport. Once the draw is set it's about matchups, surfaces, playing conditions, injuries, and the unforeseen, and that's what determines who wins. We point to changes in the rankings because the rankings eventually reflect the things that happen on the court, but it is a lagging indicator.

I don't think anyone here would dispute that rankings are a lagging indicator - but to say they're not predictive at all is a bit too strong. Yes, it's about matchups, surfaces, playing conditions, injuries, the unforeseen...but perhaps most importanly, it's about current form, and how you've been playing recently is a good indicator of that, which is captured - albeit imperfectly with a bit of time lapse- in the rankings system. If you lose early in the last three tournaments, you're probably not playing that well, and you go down in the rankings.

But perhaps more to the point of some of the discussions on here, is it a reasonably good indicator of how good a player at any given moment? I'd say it is, or at least it's better than any other mathematically objective standard that I know of. Looking at the live rankings at the moment I'm writing this, the top ten players in the world are:

Sinner
Alcaraz
Zverev
Djokovic
Draper
Fritz
Musetti
Paul
Rune
Medvedev

That looks about right to me. I might order them slightly differently, and maybe knock Medvedev out of the top 10 right now...but this looks pretty close to the best players in the game right now.

FredX wrote: ↑Tue Jun 10, 2025 5:28 pm I don't think anyone here would dispute that rankings are a lagging indicator - but to say they're not predictive at all is a bit too strong. Yes, it's about matchups, surfaces, playing conditions, injuries, the unforeseen...but perhaps most importantly, it's about current form, and how you've been playing recently is a good indicator of that, which is captured - albeit imperfectly with a bit of time lapse- in the rankings system. If you lose early in the last three tournaments, you're probably not playing that well, and you go down in the rankings.

My point about the usefulness of the rankings for predictions was to counter the point that the rankings don't mean anything because they don't always accurately predict a match result.

Suliso wrote: ↑Sun Feb 07, 2021 2:06 pm How many mother/daughter pairs are there? I'm only aware of Maria Sakkari (#20) and her mother Angeliki Kanellopoulou (#43).

Mandlikova and her daughter

Live ranking has Ben Shelton into a career high ranking of 10. With Tiafoe just a couple spots behind, there's a slight chance there will 4 American men in the top 10 in couple weeks. If that happens, I will hate the puff pieces that will surround it.

Ben Shelton will make his debut in the top 10 on Monday - Shelton & Alex de Minaur have switched places #10 & #12

skatingfan wrote: ↑Sat Jun 14, 2025 4:50 am Ben Shelton will make his debut in the top 10 on Monday - Shelton & Alex de Minaur have switched places #10 & #12

Sounds like right to me.

Iva Jovic is making her top 100 debut tomorrow. Thus there will be the following list of teenagers in the WTA top 100:

#7 Mirra Andreeva (18.1)
#52 Maya Joint (19.1)
#88 Iva Jovic (17.5)
#95 Victoria Mboko (18.8)

The highest ranked 16 year old is junior #1 Emerson Jones from Australia at #207.

For men we have three very young players in the top 100:

#17 Jakub Mensik (19.7)
#57 Joao Fonseca (18.8)
#67 Learner Tien (19.5)