I just noticed that the current rankings no longer use quality points (i.e., points that are related to the ranking of the opponent you beat). Has anyone been following this change closely? Has it had much of an impact on the rankings?

If you are a tour player, your incentive now is to just get as far as you can in a tournament and hope the draw is very weak, because there is no additional benefit to beating a top ten ranked player, except pride. I think this really hurts the Williams Sisters, whose strategy seems to have been in recent years to do disproportionately well at the slams and earn a boatload of points from those wins to carry their overall rankings.

I never udnerstood quality points. Do you mean the additional points earned when beating a quality opponent, or the index that was listed on the WTA tour rankings page? If it's the second, I never understood how that factored into someone's ranking.

Anyone know?

Well, this confirms that "quality points" are gone. More interestingly, players will now be penalized in ranking points if they don't attend the Majors (and some important "minors"). I can certainly see why the WTA wants to do this, but this would be rather harsh to players who miss a tournament due to legitimate injury (incurred, perhaps, because of the length of the season that the WTA has chosen to maintain, ironically).

http://sports.espn.go.com/sports/tennis/ne...tory?id=2288575

I'm not exactly sure how it worked, but I always thought the quality points had something to do with beating someone ahead of you in the rankings.

I like the requirement to attend certain majors and some minor events, but matters would be helped if the majors were spaced out better. With all of the injuries popping up now, a compelling case could be made for pushing some tournaments back (e.g. Australian Open) and shortening the season.

Quality points used to be points you gained by beating an opponent, based on their ranking. Beating the #1 player was worth 100 points, beating somebody ranked 251-500 was worth 1 point, and you got double quality points at the majors. They used to do something similar in men's tennis, and I always felt it was a mistake to phase it out. One of the effects of quality points is that a player who wins a tournament as a low seed tends to get more points than one who came in as the #1 seed, so it makes it easier for a player with a low ranking to make a move. This will make the ranking even more heavily weighted toward quantity than quality. Also, the number of points will be the same for all Tier 1's regardless of the field. The only advantage to it is that it will make it easier to figure out what players need to do to rise or fall in the rankings, but in my opinion, it degrades the quality of the ranking.

Furthermore, I think they're keeping the quality points on from last year until they drop off, but not--so far as I can tell--adjusting the base point values for tournaments, this year's tournaments are effectively worth less than last year's. It's quite stupid. Serena Williams will fall in the rankings even if she wins the Australian Open, because she'll lose a ton of quality points.

[ January 11, 2006, 04:18 PM: Message edited by: JC ]

This will hamper Hingis trying to make a climb in the rankings because you no longer get quality points. This could also have a pretty big impact at this year's Australian Open because even if Serena Williams were to defend the title she is going to lose I think 450 quality points she won last year. So even if she defends she will still drop in the rankings. If she loses early she could fall significantly far down in the rankings. The good thing for Serena is that she has nothing to defend after that so if she stays healthy and is able to compete consistently she should be able to get herself back relatively soon.

I really wish they'd just get it over with and either move the Australian back a month, or have the season ending tournaments and Davis/Fed Cup finals earlier, and lessen the number of events each year...or better yet, do all 3. The men's AND women's games are decimated right now. The slams will be pretty deplorable if many of the top seeds keep pulling out with injuries.

It looks like they took the quality points out of the rankings already. For example, LD is listed at 3380 total points, and it seemed like that number at the end of last season was closer to 4800 or better. Everyone's total points seem to be adjusted down some as well. My goodness, this is enough to really give you a headache!

It seems like they would have to take into account injuries with this new mandatory slams/Key Biscane policy.

And not to beat a dead horse, how can you make top players play these tournaments, without looking at injuries and length of schedule? I mean is the WTA tour that short sighted?

Hmm...they must have done that adjustment today, because I'm sure I looked at the rankings and saw Lindsay had 4900 points last night!

It makes marginally more sense to do that, but
just arbitrarily changing everybody's ranking that way just doesn't seem right to me.

the latest rankings are out -- post australian open.

things have been shaken up a bit -- kim, amelie, and lindsay are now 1,2, and 3 respectively.

hingis jumps all the way to 117. still a ways to go to get the luxury of a seed, but she's playing again this week.

but the big news -- serena is now ranked 39th! it will be tough for her to play her way into shape without a seeding with no 'easy' matches in the first couple rounds. if the draws don't go her way, she could face kim, amelie, or lindsay (or venus who's holding tough at #10) in the first round! and unless she brings more game, and a lot less serena, to these matches she'll be going home early quite a bit.

does she have the motivation to come back? on the one hand, as the endorsement money -- assuming it is tied to her ranking, as is not uncommon -- starts to dry up, that's incentive to put down the big gulps and pick up the racket. on the other hand, she probably has enough money to live on for quite some time.

but i, for one, would love to see her come back.

[ January 31, 2006, 02:48 AM: Message edited by: thersis ]

The thing that stands out to me is that Mauresmo is only 100 points behind Clijsters, who's gonna be out for a few months, meaning that Amelie will likely be ranked number one and should be the top seed for the French Open by the time it gets here.

Clijsters was out early in the year last year as well, so she may stay #1 until the points from Indian Wells come off.

[ January 30, 2006, 05:40 AM: Message edited by: JC ]