Added: 12/03/2005 |
World rankings and player level definitionWith the advent of the tennis' Open era, the founding of an global professional tennis tour, incomes from the sales of television rights, and establishing prize money that could be sufficient for player's living, the game of tennis has expanded throughout the world and has got rid its English-speaking upper-class representation.
Until the early 1950s, Bill Tilden was in general considered the greatest tennis player ever, his only challengers being Budge, Vines, and Kramer. In later 1950s though many believed Pancho Gonzales had taken over that title. Since then on, champions of the tennis's Open era, first Laver, then McEnroe and Borg, followed by Pete Sampras and currently Roger Federer, have been thought the best ever. However, even in the circle of tennis experts, no consent exists.
Today, with the objective of player level definition, two separate ranking systems are used for men and women, ATP rankings and WTA rankings respectively.
ATP men's rankings, at first only singles, were first issued 1973 and were then extended to embrace men's doubles in1976. Aside from player level definition men's rankings were devised to be used by the majority of main tennis tournaments as a starting point of deciding the entries' acceptance.
ATP men's rankings were not on a weekly basis as they are now until 1979. Here is the list containing the number of ATP men's rankings issues from 1973 and until men's doubles inclusion in 1979:
1973 -- 7 issues
1974 -- 11 issues
1975 -- 13 issues
1976 -- 23 issues
1977 -- 34 issues
1978 -- 40 issues
1979 -- 43 issues
Year-end men's rankings in the beginning were the last rankings issue of a year, or the first issue of the following year. This tradition was abolished in 1991 when ATP decided it to follow their Singles & Doubles Championships in late November.
In 2000 an additional men's single and men's doubles ranking was set up by the ATP. This was given the name of ATP Champions Race. According to it, all players begin the year having zero points and start a calendar year race. The player who accumulates maximum number of points becomes the world #1. This additional men's ranking was brought in to make things more logical and understandable for the public and to make sure that the best players took par in the most prestigious tennis tournaments.
In women's tennis, player level definition is reflected in WTA rankings. Separate rankings for singles and doubles are published weekly from the WTA Tour office in Florida.
The WTA Rankings is the global computer ranking system for women's professional tennis. This system reflects both performance of a player in Tournament play (Round Points) and her record adjacent to other players (Quality Points). The results used to establish the player levels are the competitions that have given the player's highest Ranking Points during the last fifty-two weeks. The ranking system also determines player's entries' acceptances and seeding for all competitions. Just like ATP rankings the WTA rankings are issued weekly.
The Computer WTA Ranking is easy to understand system and player level definition can be carried out with ease. Competitions are added to the system's database on a weekly basis.
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