By all accounts, Ana Ivanovic is having something of a revival this year - she won Aukland, defeating Venus Williams (for just the second time in her career) in the final. She made the quarterfinal in Melbourne, losing to Genie Bouchard in a tough 3-set match. After some mixed results in the premier spring hard court events of Indian Wells and Miami, she won Monterrey with a semi-final victory over Caroline Wozniacki. She followed this up with arguably her best performance of the year at Stuttgart, despite losing the final.
It was the first time in 5 years that she made consecutive finals - not too shabby. Along the way, she defeated Julia Goerges (meh...) Svetlana Kuznetsova (2-time major winner and winner at the Citi Open last week) and her personal nemesis Jelena Jankovic, who always puts up a good fight - particularly against her. In the end, she succumbed to the best clay-courter on the WTA tour, Maria Sharapova (7 of her last 8 titles have been on clay, BTW) in the final. She capped off the highlights of this season so far with an impressive victory at the Aegon classic at Birmingham, where she never lost more than 5 games in a match and won the only grass court title of her career.
But a strange thing happened after that - she lost a match in the 3rd round at Wimbledon over Sabine Liscki after winning the first set on Saturday, and appearing to have the match in hand before the match was suspended due to poor light. Because Wimbledon doesn't play the middle Sunday, the match didn't resume until Monday, but she was still up a break in the second at 5-2, when the match was suspended again due to rain. This proved to be a tipping point, because upon resumption she proceed to lose 7 of the next 9 games, and the match, showing once again that in tennis it is just as easy to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
Following that capitulation, in the context of the previous 7 months that saw her most successful season since 2008, she took the curious decision of splitting with the coach whose tenure coincided with those results, Serbian Nemanja Kontic. In and of itself, that is not unusual - players split with coaches for a variety of reasons and often do it when they appear to be really well and/or making great progress. At the end of the day, the player is the employer and they have the prerogative to make changes whenever they like.
What's strange is the reasons she gave for the change:
"You want someone who's going to be there to support you no matter what...to make you motivated, to make you hungry for success. I really wanted to get higher in the rankings...I definitely look for someone in that manner rather than someone who's going to be technical."
That's my emphasis precisely because I can't believe what I'm reading.
First, she emphasizes that she really wanted to move up in the rankings, and ironically, that is precisely what she did in 2014. In fact, she not only moved into the top 10 for the first time since 2008, but she also won 3 titles (where she had no titles the previous two years). You could hardly blame Kontic for scratching his head on this one, if winning titles and moving up in the rankings was truly the objective - in that case he did his job quite well.
She then goes out of her way to imply that Kontic wasn't giving her "unconditional love" so to speak, didn't motivate her, or keep her hungry for success. Now this is pretty damning for any coach hoping to get a job with the multitude of female professionals who seek a coach that will provide these exact same things for them. In that regard, Miss Ivanovic did him no favors here - in fact, if I didn't know any better, that really comes across as the last throes of a woman scorned.
But I digress.
The real question is, why in the world does she need someone else to motivate her? Isn't that something that is really her responsibility to herself? If she isn't self-motivated, isn't that problem hers and hers alone? Maybe she should look at the reasons she isn't motivated - too much money, too many matches, too many people around her putting pressure on her to earn their living? None of those have to do with the coach, because at the end of the day she is the final arbiter of her career decisions, including all of the above.
But the most incredible sentence is the last - that she's less interested in the technical than the motivational and psychological - I just can't believe or understand that. I mean, after all, this is a sport - a physical activity. Striking a tennis ball is not like moving pieces on a chess board - it does matter how you do what you do, so it behooves anyone who wants to do what they do better, to find someone who can help with that pesky "doing" bit..i.e. the technical. Furthermore, even if you work off the assumption that the body follows the mind (despite ample evidence to the contrary) the body still has to follow - in other words, even a mental edge has to translate into a technical edge, so why not cut out the middle man and work on the technical?
The mental game is by far the most overrated aspect of tennis - for a variety of reasons people attribute way too much importance to it, and because this attribution is so pervasive, a lot of people who should know better lap it up like a stray cat over a saucer of milk.
But Ana Ivanovic, you really should know better.
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Showing posts with label WTA rankings. Show all posts
Showing posts with label WTA rankings. Show all posts
Thursday, August 7, 2014
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
NEW MONEY, SAME OLD PROBLEM
Recently Jelena Jankovic hit back at stinging criticism from Roger Federer on the state of rankings at the WTA. In essence, he repeated what most have said about Jankovic’s stint as the #1 player in the world – that it made no sense.
Jankovic was none too pleased, but a quick look at the distribution of points across categories of tournaments on both the WTA and the ATP tours demonstrates some very strange possibilities. Federer would do well to consider this the next time he chats with the ATP President, as he himself could wind up in the unenviable position of looking a bit silly for his ranking as well.
There are nine 1000 Series events, excluding the year end championships, on the ATP Tour, each of which is worth 1000 points to the winner. Each grand slam is worth 2000 points – 9000 vs. 8000 points – which means that a player could win the calendar slam, another could win every 1000 series event, and the winner of the calendar slam would have to find another 1000 points (all other things equal) to obtain the #1 ranking?
Huh?
That’s right – a guy could win 28 grand slam matches in a row, and still come out the wrong end of the rankings. What a nightmare that would be. Fair enough, the 1000 series sweep is an altogether less likely scenario than the calendar slam, but it reveals that the rankings are weighted towards the events that the ATP controls, and as such if the stars so aligned, we could see such a ridiculous scenario played out. You could argue that a player who wins all 9 MS events deserves to be #1, but would you feel that way if another player won the calendar slam?
Well, that's an unlikely scenario, so let's take it piece by piece – imagine a player wins two slams – 4000 points looks pretty good – but to overcome that (again all other things equal) you'd just have to win 3 1000 series titles (one more than did Djokovic and Murray last year) and two 500 series events (say Rotterdam and Indianapolis) and you'd have the exact same number of points as a winner of Wimbledon AND the US Open in the same year.
Now which record would you want for your favorite player?
You see, the tennis gods look favorably on the calendar slam – even half of it. Why? Because there’s continuity of purpose in the slams, and as such, you can gauge a player against the greats of the game a hell of a lot easier with slam results than a mish-mash of tournaments, the collection of which seems to change with the each year. The top 8 players don’t even play the same number of matches as the rest of the field in 1000 or 500 series tournaments, and although you’ve got more time to rest in between matches at slams, anyone who’s played a 5 set match will tell you that it’s always harder to come back from that than your average 3-setter.
Consider this other possibility – a player winning four 500 series tournaments (say, Rotterdam, Doha, Indianapolis and Barcelona) is adjudged the equal of the champion at Wimbledon – in ATP points that is. Any player with his head not on backwards would choose Wimbledon over the other events, so why don't the rankings reflect that.
Now let’s look at the women’s side.
The Wimbledon champion on the women’s side would earn fewer points than another player winning 3 non-mandatory Premier 5 tournaments (2000 vs. 2400 points) say, Beijing, Stuttgart and Moscow. So you don’t even have to win any tournaments where all the best players are required to participate, and you can earn the same number of points as one of the Williams sisters.
This is probably the area where Federer has a good point. It is altogether unlikely that a player who is capable of winning more than three 1000 series shields in a season doesn’t win at least on slam, but win 2 of them, and you’re on par with the US Open champion. That doesn’t make a lot of sense, but it has only happened because the slam winners tend to win 1000 series tournaments along the way. That’s a convenient coincidence, but a glaring anomaly in the making nonetheless.
Ivan Lendl was ranked #1 in 1983; he only reached two grand slam finals but racked up enough victories in tennis hotbeds like North Conway, New Hampshire and Naples, Italy to hold the top spot come Christmas. In his favor that year was that 4 different men won grand slams (Noah at the French, McEnroe at Wimbledon, Connors at the US Open and Wilander at the Australian). So the argument then with Lendl was the same as it is today with Jankovic; how can a guy/gal who can’t win a slam to save his/her life, be considered the best player in the world? It didn’t help that in 1983 he lost 4 out of 5 to McEnroe, 2 out of 4 to Wilander, 2 out of 4 to Connors and his one and only match to Noah - a collective 5 of 14 against the slam champions.
Fast forward, nip and tuck to the women's side, and we have our example in Jelena (Lendlova) Jankovic – last year she won Rome, Beijing, Stuttgart and Moscow (sound familiar?), had consistently (barely) above average results everywhere else, and so was ranked #1. But nobody – not even Jankovic, I suspect – sincerely believed she was the best player in the world – maybe the most consistent, but certainly not the best. Well, thankfully Serena has put that question off for a bit.
Jankovic won more points for any 3 of those tournaments than Sharapova did for winning in Melbourne, Ivanovic did for conquering Paris, Venus did for winning her fifth at the All England Club, and Serena Williams did for exorcising her small town blues at Flushing. Jankovic lost her only match to "I'm So Pretty", went 1-2 against Verdasco's ex-girlfriend, split 1-1 with the Fly Trap, and 1-2 to Serena, for a whopping 3 for 8 against the slam winners - ironically she lost in 3 of the 4 slams to the eventual champion, but still topped the table at the end of the season - this after losing in the semi-final of the year end championships.
The point distributions do not represent the historical or even current significance of tournaments. In order to encourage high profile players to play events that are essentially money-makers for the tour, they have to put a point value on them that will draw marquee players. But as soon as they do this the advantage goes to those who play more often, but not necessarily better, and that’s when the rankings begin to make little to no sense at all. So why do they want to draw players to these events? – I told you, that’s where the money is; new sponsors, new venues and a whole lot of NEW MONEY (in Beijing and Moscow, anyway).
The only solution is for the ATP and the WTA to admit that tradition counts in tennis and the only thing that everyone cares about equally is the slams. They could eat into the gravitas of the slams by keeping a more consistent year to year schedule and attaching some historical value to smaller events, but as long as money changes hands globally, new venues have cash to burn, and players have entourages to support, there’s little hope for a calendar or ranking system that make sense on both sides of the aisle any time soon.
Well, at least Jelena can always take Roger for a ride in the Porsche she won in Stuttgart – you can’t drive a ranking anyway.
Jankovic was none too pleased, but a quick look at the distribution of points across categories of tournaments on both the WTA and the ATP tours demonstrates some very strange possibilities. Federer would do well to consider this the next time he chats with the ATP President, as he himself could wind up in the unenviable position of looking a bit silly for his ranking as well.
There are nine 1000 Series events, excluding the year end championships, on the ATP Tour, each of which is worth 1000 points to the winner. Each grand slam is worth 2000 points – 9000 vs. 8000 points – which means that a player could win the calendar slam, another could win every 1000 series event, and the winner of the calendar slam would have to find another 1000 points (all other things equal) to obtain the #1 ranking?
Huh?
That’s right – a guy could win 28 grand slam matches in a row, and still come out the wrong end of the rankings. What a nightmare that would be. Fair enough, the 1000 series sweep is an altogether less likely scenario than the calendar slam, but it reveals that the rankings are weighted towards the events that the ATP controls, and as such if the stars so aligned, we could see such a ridiculous scenario played out. You could argue that a player who wins all 9 MS events deserves to be #1, but would you feel that way if another player won the calendar slam?
Well, that's an unlikely scenario, so let's take it piece by piece – imagine a player wins two slams – 4000 points looks pretty good – but to overcome that (again all other things equal) you'd just have to win 3 1000 series titles (one more than did Djokovic and Murray last year) and two 500 series events (say Rotterdam and Indianapolis) and you'd have the exact same number of points as a winner of Wimbledon AND the US Open in the same year.
Now which record would you want for your favorite player?
You see, the tennis gods look favorably on the calendar slam – even half of it. Why? Because there’s continuity of purpose in the slams, and as such, you can gauge a player against the greats of the game a hell of a lot easier with slam results than a mish-mash of tournaments, the collection of which seems to change with the each year. The top 8 players don’t even play the same number of matches as the rest of the field in 1000 or 500 series tournaments, and although you’ve got more time to rest in between matches at slams, anyone who’s played a 5 set match will tell you that it’s always harder to come back from that than your average 3-setter.
Consider this other possibility – a player winning four 500 series tournaments (say, Rotterdam, Doha, Indianapolis and Barcelona) is adjudged the equal of the champion at Wimbledon – in ATP points that is. Any player with his head not on backwards would choose Wimbledon over the other events, so why don't the rankings reflect that.
Now let’s look at the women’s side.
The Wimbledon champion on the women’s side would earn fewer points than another player winning 3 non-mandatory Premier 5 tournaments (2000 vs. 2400 points) say, Beijing, Stuttgart and Moscow. So you don’t even have to win any tournaments where all the best players are required to participate, and you can earn the same number of points as one of the Williams sisters.
This is probably the area where Federer has a good point. It is altogether unlikely that a player who is capable of winning more than three 1000 series shields in a season doesn’t win at least on slam, but win 2 of them, and you’re on par with the US Open champion. That doesn’t make a lot of sense, but it has only happened because the slam winners tend to win 1000 series tournaments along the way. That’s a convenient coincidence, but a glaring anomaly in the making nonetheless.
Ivan Lendl was ranked #1 in 1983; he only reached two grand slam finals but racked up enough victories in tennis hotbeds like North Conway, New Hampshire and Naples, Italy to hold the top spot come Christmas. In his favor that year was that 4 different men won grand slams (Noah at the French, McEnroe at Wimbledon, Connors at the US Open and Wilander at the Australian). So the argument then with Lendl was the same as it is today with Jankovic; how can a guy/gal who can’t win a slam to save his/her life, be considered the best player in the world? It didn’t help that in 1983 he lost 4 out of 5 to McEnroe, 2 out of 4 to Wilander, 2 out of 4 to Connors and his one and only match to Noah - a collective 5 of 14 against the slam champions.
Fast forward, nip and tuck to the women's side, and we have our example in Jelena (Lendlova) Jankovic – last year she won Rome, Beijing, Stuttgart and Moscow (sound familiar?), had consistently (barely) above average results everywhere else, and so was ranked #1. But nobody – not even Jankovic, I suspect – sincerely believed she was the best player in the world – maybe the most consistent, but certainly not the best. Well, thankfully Serena has put that question off for a bit.
Jankovic won more points for any 3 of those tournaments than Sharapova did for winning in Melbourne, Ivanovic did for conquering Paris, Venus did for winning her fifth at the All England Club, and Serena Williams did for exorcising her small town blues at Flushing. Jankovic lost her only match to "I'm So Pretty", went 1-2 against Verdasco's ex-girlfriend, split 1-1 with the Fly Trap, and 1-2 to Serena, for a whopping 3 for 8 against the slam winners - ironically she lost in 3 of the 4 slams to the eventual champion, but still topped the table at the end of the season - this after losing in the semi-final of the year end championships.
The point distributions do not represent the historical or even current significance of tournaments. In order to encourage high profile players to play events that are essentially money-makers for the tour, they have to put a point value on them that will draw marquee players. But as soon as they do this the advantage goes to those who play more often, but not necessarily better, and that’s when the rankings begin to make little to no sense at all. So why do they want to draw players to these events? – I told you, that’s where the money is; new sponsors, new venues and a whole lot of NEW MONEY (in Beijing and Moscow, anyway).
The only solution is for the ATP and the WTA to admit that tradition counts in tennis and the only thing that everyone cares about equally is the slams. They could eat into the gravitas of the slams by keeping a more consistent year to year schedule and attaching some historical value to smaller events, but as long as money changes hands globally, new venues have cash to burn, and players have entourages to support, there’s little hope for a calendar or ranking system that make sense on both sides of the aisle any time soon.
Well, at least Jelena can always take Roger for a ride in the Porsche she won in Stuttgart – you can’t drive a ranking anyway.
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