Will The Real Women’s No. 1 Please Stand Up?
The WTA’s top two pupils were skirt-deep in the ongoing dilemma of the sport’s ranking system last week. The 52-week cumulative scoring system has ranked Russia’s Dinara Safina as the top female of the tour going for 17 weeks. Safina usurped No. 2-ranked Serena Williams, despite never having won a Grand Slam title at any point in her career. Wiliams has won two just this year (Wimbledon and the Australian, where she beat Safina in the finals) and 11 singles titles since 1999.
Last week, Williams repeated her familiar cry that she is “the people’s champ” and that no one who is winless in Grand Slam tournaments should be considered the best in the world. It’s no secret that Williams was sore about losing her No. 1 rank back in April, but others including Williams’ sister Venus and former World No. 1 Jelena Jankovic are joining into the chorus.
“To be number one,” said Jankovic, “you should be complete and if you are number one you have to be beating the Williams sisters.”
If Serena is right about Safina not deserving her top rank, why does she have it?
It’s that pesky rankings system and the fact that Safina is one of the few women whose play has helped uncover the weaknesses of it. The WTA’s system assigns points to each tournament and each round of that tournament. For example: the winner of Wimbledon will walk away with 1,000 points, loser earns 700 and decreases each round down to two points simply for being one of the 128 players to show up.
The four Grand Slams offer the most points because they offer the most difficult competition. Safina does well in these tournaments, but as we said, she doesn’t win. What she does win are all the other tournaments that aren’t as publicized or as competitive. She’s the biggest fish in the smaller ponds.
The top-ranked Russian has reached the finals in seven of the 12 tournaments she’s entered in 2009. She’s won three of them, but all of the tourney’s she’s won were smaller events that yielded half the points of the Grand Slams. The trick is, she’s entering more competitions than Serena Williams (she’s only entered 10 this year) and has taken more advantage of those smaller competitions (Serena has often been accused of losing focus in smaller tournaments). Earning only 500 points at Wimbledon can be supplemented by winning a tiny tournament during a week that Williams had taken off or spent playing in non-WTA Tour competitions. Last week when Williams played in the World Team Tennis, which does not count toward WTA points, Safina earned an additional 75 by making it into the third round of the L.A. Championships.
And that’s the problem, the WTA rankings don’t weigh the tournaments properly. Why not double the points players receive for advancing through Grand Slams and getting rid of the limit to how many smaller tournaments the Tour will count toward the point system? The Tour only counts the best 17 tournaments for each player in one season. There are 55 WTA Tours per year. Obviously some of them are played at the same time, but a healthy player could either play in 40-44 tourneys a season, or with the purchase of a truly kickass jetpack, go for all 55.
It’s a shame that some of the attacks have felt in nature, if not in fact, to be attacks on Safina and not on the WTA scoring, a detail that had been lost on some, but not on Safina.
“I didn’t do the ranking system,” said Safina. “If [Serena] has questions, she can give these questions to the WTA who is doing the ranking system. It’s the result of how you play the whole year, not just the four grand slams.”
The rankings do little other than provide a point of reference for fans, tournament seeders and Serena Williams’ ego. That being said, if you’re going to do something, do it accurately. Serena’s the best, now let’s hope the WTA finds a way to get her to stop talking about it.
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Photos courtesy of Yahoo! Sports via Getty Images
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