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pretty_panther a couple of days ago and we started talking about where everyone gets their points. I've kinda wanted to do a post about this for a while, but wasn't sure that anyone else would be interested. So since I now know that at least one other person finds it interesting, here's my random post about the points for everyone in the top 10. It will be long, it will be rambly, I wrote most of it in the early hours of the morning when I couldn't sleep, so I can't guarantee for coherence/ability to type.
Right, first of all, types of tournament, since that's the easy one to analyse. Slams and Masters are the difficult ones (obviously, that's why you get more points for winning them), coz they're the ones everyone has to go to, so you know that all of the top ranked players are gonna be there and to do well there you will have to beat people in the top 10 (or at the very least some guy on a hot streak who is beating all of the other top 10 players). But they're also where the most points are available - 8000 for Slams, 9000 for Masters. So really, the more points you have there, the more top players you're beating. Yeah, you have tournaments like Dubai, which may as well be a Masters considering the number of top players that go there, but they're rare. So yeah, more points at Slams/Masters = better player, right?
Here, Rafa and Roger are pretty much... well, perfect. Slams are, for the most part, the most difficult tournaments to win, what with the whole best of five format, the fact that everyone goes to them, and everyone is determined to do well there because of the prestige attached to it (the only thing that make Masters a bit harder is that you have to play consecutive days). So obviously having most of their points there is good. Then the Masters are still pretty high, with the other tournaments just adding a bit extra that they don't really need. In fact, for both of them the difference between them and the person below them is enough that if they didn't include their other tournaments they'd still be ahead. They're just that good.
In fair-ness, Andy and Djokovic are both doing pretty well on that front too. Yes, their slams aren't as high as the boys, but the difference in points between a win and a final, and between a final and a semi is so huge that when you have two players dominating the Slams so much, it'd be pretty difficult to do too much better. The one thing they're lacking is consistency in slams, with Mandy going out early in RG, Nole out in the second round of Wimbledon, and neither living up to expectations in Melbourne (oh how hilarious the "favourites" argument seems now, with the "I'm the favourite", "no I should be the favourite", "but I want to be the favourite", "Lalalala, I'll just quietly carry on kicking everyone's asses in this corner shall I? Oooh look, shiny trophy"). But I guess when you have one player who has three titles and one semi, and another player with one title and three finals, anything is gonna seem inconsistent by comparison >.< But anyway, Nole and Mandy most definitely make up for it when it comes to Masters, which puts them in the same situation as Roger and Rafa, where the other tournaments have no actual impact on their current ranking.
Davydenko... bit unfair to judge him on that one, coz he was unable to play Australia so there's a load of points he wasn't able to get. But hey, he got a lot of Masters points to make up for it.
Beyond that, there's only really two people who I have anything to say about on this point, and they're the main reason I included the stuff about different types of tournament rather just rambling about different surfaces. The Argentinians. I've wanted to have this rant for ages. Del Potro, with over 60% of his points being from other tournaments, and Nalbandian, not quite as bad, but still over 50%. What exactly does that prove? That they can beat people ranked 30 places below them? Yeah, that's great... but that shouldn't make you a top 10 player. Nalbandian has next to nothing in Slams, he didn't get past the third round in ANY of them. Clearly best of five is NOT his forte. And Del Potro is just as bad at Masters. Ok, mostly that is due to the fact that last year he didn't get direct entry to some of them, so he just went to other tournaments instead. But let's look at his past record against top 10 players:
vs. Rafa: 0-3 (all straight sets, one bagel)
vs. Roger: 0-4 (all striahgt sets, two bagels)
vs. Nole: 0-2 (all straight sets)
vs. Mandy: 0-2 (took 2 sets in the USO, took one set in Rome then retired in the third)
vs. Davydenko: 1-2 (won one Davis Cup match in straight sets. Lost the other two matches in straight sets)
vs. Roddick: 1-0 (beat Andy in straight sets in summer last year when he was on a confidence high from a long winning streak (against nobodies) and Andy was just back from an injury)
vs. Simon: 1-1 (lost in 3 in New Haven, won in 5 in USO)
vs. Nando: 0-0
vs. Nalbandian: 1-3 (all straight sets, got bagelled by David last time they met)
So that is, in total, 4-17 against the rest of the current top 10. If he can't beat the top players, how is he going to do at all well in Masters? And this year he's not gonna hide behind his 5 million extra little crappy tournaments, coz a) his ranking will be high enough that all Masters tournaments will be mandatory, and b) the new rule about playing 500s means he'll have to play the bigger little tournaments, not just the random tiny ones that no one else goes to where the second seed is ranked somewhere in the 20s. My prediction? He'll be down to about #15 by Cincinnati (when he will have all Masters tournaments included in his ranking, and all his points from the winning streak when he was wandering around playing nothing tournaments in America (while everyone else was at the Olympics) will have gone). I don't think he'll drop further than that, he's consistent enough against the lower ranked players, but it's like as soon as he sees a number next to his opponent's name his brain just stops. Unless something big changes on that front, I just cannot see him staying in the top ten for much longer. We'll see how good my predictions are come August.
Well I think that's all there is to say about the different tournament types.
Now on to surfaces, which is something people seem to ignore (apart from when they are calling someone a clay-courter. Why is it that the terms "clay court specialist" seems to exist, and seems to have some negative connotations, but no one ever talks in the same way about "hard court specialists"? Maybe it's just that there are so bloody many of them now that it would have to be used for about half of the tour. There are so few "all surface players", which is why I find this really interesting.
First, we need to look at how many points are available on each surface, coz it's the most uneven distribution imaginable (which I really hate, but I'll talk more about that later). January is hard court. February is mostly hard, with a couple of clay tournaments in South America. March is hard, April/May is clay. June is grass (WOO, a whole... 1 month). July is 50/50 hard and clay. August-November is ALL hard. That's 7 months on hard, 3 months on clay, and a month on grass. So that's roughly 60% hard, 30% clay, 10% grass. Great. Coz that's fair. That said, the hard court season is maybe spread out a bit more than clay and grass (the clay season in particular is pretty much solid), so maybe there's a bit less hard and a bit more of the other two, but it's close enough.
Anyway that means that the top 3 are doing pretty well in terms of spreading their points out over all surfaces. I mean, Roger and Rafa both OWNED EVERYTHING on grass and clay (with Rafa winning the most points it is physically possible to get on grass), so that skews their points a little bit away from the hard court, and Nole fucked up Wimbledon (which you can't really make up for elsewhere - lose early at Wimbledon and your grass points aren't gonna be good - fortunately he still had the Queens final, so it's not too bad), but the three of them are about as close to perfect as you can really ask (with Rafa truly showing that he is no longer a "Clay court specialist" by joing the elite 4 who have won a Slam on every surface. Yes, clay is still his best surface, but only in the sense that he is completely unbeatable there, as oppose to just mostly unbeatable). They are the only ones in the top 10 who have done equally well on all surfaces. And they are the top 3. Go figure.
Davydenko has the same problem as Nole - messing up at Wimbledon means the grass points are gone... cept he messed up even more than Nole, and didn't have Queens or anything to add a bit, so his grass points are literally all gone. Just 10 points for y'know... turning up in London. But his clay and hard court are split pretty evenly, just skewed a tiny bit towards the clay side but nothing massive, so he's doing pretty well.
Then of course, we have the hard courters. Mandy. Oh Mandy. If it weren't for the MASSIVE bias towards hard court you would not be #4 in the world. Yeah, his grass isn't bad, considering how hard it is to get points on grass (especially when you have Rafa and Roger storming through every grass tournament saying "YOU CANNOT HAS!"). But clay? And this year was actually his best year so far on clay, with him in the positive for the first time - his career win-loss record on clay is 11-14 (rather amusing, he has actually lost the same number of matches on clay as Rafa. Difference is, Rafa has won 157, rather than... 11 XD). I didn't realise quite how much that is Not His Surface until I was looking on Wikipedia earlier today and saw that record. That is dreadful. Christ, if everything was still natural surfaces he would be SO screwed.
And of course, there's original Andy. Bless him, I was watching his Jonathan Ross interview again yesterday and was giggling at Jonathan asking why he didn't do so well on clay, and asking if it was better suited to "lesser men". Andy's response? No, it's probably harder to win on clay, the points are longer, you have to be fitter... so he's probably the "lesser man" (I love his honesty. He doesn't need to make crap up to put other people down, coz he's awesome anyway, even if he is shit on clay). Mostly I think it's just the fact that his super fast super flat serve doesn't work on clay that really hurts him. That said, looking on Wikipedia, he's got a much better record than Mandy. In fact there's only been one year when he had a negative win-loss (2006, when it was 5-6). But yeah, no one's ever gonna doubt that he's a hard court player. He normally does better on grass, y'know, one bad day is enough to completely and irreparably kill your grass court season.
Del Potro... not much to say. Another one that messed up Wimbledon (it's such a shame that one bad match can so completely kill the grass court season. Why can they not have like 2 more weeks on grass, maybe play a Masters there? Or play Australia on the grass courts at Kooyong again... tho that would take away Rafa's "Slams on all surfaces" record, so we'll leave it). His clay points aren't great, but nor are they dreadful. But so many of his points came from winning all the tiny tournaments in August, so they're all hard court.
Gilles Simon... pretty similar to Del Potro but with a slightly better result in Wimbledon and slightly lower clay results. Had some good results at internationals on clay to make up for his dreadful results in clay Masters (he lost to Mandy in Hamburg ffs)
Nalbandian. Oh dear. Now THERE is a hard court specialist. How strange that the only two Argentinians in the top 10 are hard courters, given that it's a country that usually produces clay courters (see Buenos Aires this week). But I guess it's so bloody difficult to get into the top ten as a clay courter that I shouldn't be surprised. Anyway, everyone knows all the best clay courters are Spanish :P
The only person in the top 10 who is even CLOSE to being a clay courter is Nando... who still has 45% of his points on hard court. And who has only just got into the top ten by getting to the semi-finals in a hard court slam. So obviously he's still doing pretty well on hard court... he's just a bit more consistent on clay.
How sad is it that the only clay court specialist to get to the top ten has to also be a good hard court player, when the rest of the top ten is dominated by people who seem to be lost on the red stuff? And there's no such thing as a grass court specialist anymore - the closest we have are Rafa and Roger, who are just... tennis specialists. Anyone whose best surface is grass is well and truly screwed, coz they have a whole, oooh, 4 weeks to shine. You couldn't get anywhere with that. If the calendar was actually fair, and the natural surfaces were played as much as hard court, the top ten would be very different. People who have only got a hard court game would move right down. People who play well on clay or grass would appear. People like Rafa and Roger and Nole would be even further in front as they show that you have to be able to play every surface equally - and surely they should be rewarded for that. Well obviously they already are being rewarded - like i said, it's no coincidence that the only all-surface players are the top 3 - but I wish they could get more recognition for it.
At the moment you only get the big reward if you are a clay-courter who manages to significantly improve his hard court game (see Rafa), but there is little-to-no motivation for a hard court specialist to improve his clay court game coz you can sit quite happily at #4 without having a clay game at all. You can stay in the top 10 for 7 years (and even reach #1 for a few weeks) whilst being (by your own admission) shit on clay. Of course, it's near impossible to actually improve on grass, coz you're only there for 4 weeks of the year, so you just have to improve your tennis in general and hope that it works when you get to Wimbledon.
Really, if you think about it the natural surfaces should be more difficult, simply because they are natural. With a hard court, the only thing that changes is the speed of the bounce; something which they will get used to during practice, and depending whether it's indoor or outdoor, the weather. But with the natural surfaces there is so much more. You still have the speed of the bounce, but you're also going to get things like the different spin effects from the clay (which kills Andy Roddick's game, but which Rafa has learnt to use to his great advantage). You're going to get that bad bounce when it hits an uneven patch of grass, so you need to have faster reflexes to account for the sudden change (why Roger and Rafa do so well on grass). You're definitely gonna be outdoors, so you need to be able to correct for the wind, contend with the sun and have the mental strength to sit in the locker rooms for an hour without losing concentration while it rainsall over London.
What does it say that 7/10 of Mandy's titles have been indoor hard court tournaments? The type with the least possible variables - flat bounce, no possibility of bad bounce, no wind turning your winner into a UE and messing up your ball toss when you serve, no sun getting in your eyes and making shadows across the court. I'm not saying it's easy to win an indoor tournament, but I can't help but think it's gotta take a lot more to win a clay, grass, or even outdoor hard court tournament, when you need to have the reflexes to correct for all the changes, the mental strength not to get frustrated when you get a bad bounce that makes it impossible for you to reach a ball, and the ability to work out how to correct your shots so that when the wind catches the ball it still lands inside the lines.
Anyway, it will be interesting to see what happens in April, when the European clay season starts. Should be interesting
Ok, I was expecting this post to be long, but I didn't realise quite how much I can ramble about this. I don't think I missed anything, tho knowing me I probably did. If anyone actually managed to get through this post without losing the will to live I will be most impressed XD
...god I'm such a geek. Ah well. TBF, this posting has been in the back of my mind for so long, it just got a bit... overgrown.
pretty_panther a couple of days ago and we started talking about where everyone gets their points. I've kinda wanted to do a post about this for a while, but wasn't sure that anyone else would be interested. So since I now know that at least one other person finds it interesting, here's my random post about the points for everyone in the top 10. It will be long, it will be rambly, I wrote most of it in the early hours of the morning when I couldn't sleep, so I can't guarantee for coherence/ability to type.| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | ||||
| Nadal | Federer | Djokovic | Murray | Davydenko | Roddick | Del Potro | Simon | Verdasco | Nalbandian | ||||
| Total |
| 11410 | 9010 | 7460 | 4850 | 4510 | 4350 | 4015 | 3480 | 3395 | |||
| Difference | - |
| 2400 | 1550 | 2685 | 265 | 60 | 335 | 535 | 85 | |||
| HC |
| 52.3% | 64.7% | 86.3% | 61.9% | 88.5% | 72.9% |
| 44.6% | 90.0% | |||
|
| 30.9% | 31.1% | 7.0% | 37.9% | 10.0% | 25.5% |
| 40.7% | 9.7% | |||
| Grass |
| 16.8% | 4.2% | 6.7% | 0.2% | 1.6% | 1.6% |
| 14.8% | 0.3% | |||
| Slams |
| 52.6% | 24.8% | 29.9% | 9.6% | 28.6% | 23.0% | 16.7% | 42.2% | 8.1% | |||
| Masters |
| 28.1% | 46.2% | 43.3% | 51.1% | 32.4% | 11.0% | 39.1% | 25.0% | 40.4% | |||
| Others |
| 17.5% | 14.7% | 18.8% | 22.5% | 39.0% | 61.4% | 34.2% | 32.8% | 51.5% |
Right, first of all, types of tournament, since that's the easy one to analyse. Slams and Masters are the difficult ones (obviously, that's why you get more points for winning them), coz they're the ones everyone has to go to, so you know that all of the top ranked players are gonna be there and to do well there you will have to beat people in the top 10 (or at the very least some guy on a hot streak who is beating all of the other top 10 players). But they're also where the most points are available - 8000 for Slams, 9000 for Masters. So really, the more points you have there, the more top players you're beating. Yeah, you have tournaments like Dubai, which may as well be a Masters considering the number of top players that go there, but they're rare. So yeah, more points at Slams/Masters = better player, right?
Here, Rafa and Roger are pretty much... well, perfect. Slams are, for the most part, the most difficult tournaments to win, what with the whole best of five format, the fact that everyone goes to them, and everyone is determined to do well there because of the prestige attached to it (the only thing that make Masters a bit harder is that you have to play consecutive days). So obviously having most of their points there is good. Then the Masters are still pretty high, with the other tournaments just adding a bit extra that they don't really need. In fact, for both of them the difference between them and the person below them is enough that if they didn't include their other tournaments they'd still be ahead. They're just that good.
In fair-ness, Andy and Djokovic are both doing pretty well on that front too. Yes, their slams aren't as high as the boys, but the difference in points between a win and a final, and between a final and a semi is so huge that when you have two players dominating the Slams so much, it'd be pretty difficult to do too much better. The one thing they're lacking is consistency in slams, with Mandy going out early in RG, Nole out in the second round of Wimbledon, and neither living up to expectations in Melbourne (oh how hilarious the "favourites" argument seems now, with the "I'm the favourite", "no I should be the favourite", "but I want to be the favourite", "Lalalala, I'll just quietly carry on kicking everyone's asses in this corner shall I? Oooh look, shiny trophy"). But I guess when you have one player who has three titles and one semi, and another player with one title and three finals, anything is gonna seem inconsistent by comparison >.< But anyway, Nole and Mandy most definitely make up for it when it comes to Masters, which puts them in the same situation as Roger and Rafa, where the other tournaments have no actual impact on their current ranking.
Davydenko... bit unfair to judge him on that one, coz he was unable to play Australia so there's a load of points he wasn't able to get. But hey, he got a lot of Masters points to make up for it.
Beyond that, there's only really two people who I have anything to say about on this point, and they're the main reason I included the stuff about different types of tournament rather just rambling about different surfaces. The Argentinians. I've wanted to have this rant for ages. Del Potro, with over 60% of his points being from other tournaments, and Nalbandian, not quite as bad, but still over 50%. What exactly does that prove? That they can beat people ranked 30 places below them? Yeah, that's great... but that shouldn't make you a top 10 player. Nalbandian has next to nothing in Slams, he didn't get past the third round in ANY of them. Clearly best of five is NOT his forte. And Del Potro is just as bad at Masters. Ok, mostly that is due to the fact that last year he didn't get direct entry to some of them, so he just went to other tournaments instead. But let's look at his past record against top 10 players:
vs. Rafa: 0-3 (all straight sets, one bagel)
vs. Roger: 0-4 (all striahgt sets, two bagels)
vs. Nole: 0-2 (all straight sets)
vs. Mandy: 0-2 (took 2 sets in the USO, took one set in Rome then retired in the third)
vs. Davydenko: 1-2 (won one Davis Cup match in straight sets. Lost the other two matches in straight sets)
vs. Roddick: 1-0 (beat Andy in straight sets in summer last year when he was on a confidence high from a long winning streak (against nobodies) and Andy was just back from an injury)
vs. Simon: 1-1 (lost in 3 in New Haven, won in 5 in USO)
vs. Nando: 0-0
vs. Nalbandian: 1-3 (all straight sets, got bagelled by David last time they met)
So that is, in total, 4-17 against the rest of the current top 10. If he can't beat the top players, how is he going to do at all well in Masters? And this year he's not gonna hide behind his 5 million extra little crappy tournaments, coz a) his ranking will be high enough that all Masters tournaments will be mandatory, and b) the new rule about playing 500s means he'll have to play the bigger little tournaments, not just the random tiny ones that no one else goes to where the second seed is ranked somewhere in the 20s. My prediction? He'll be down to about #15 by Cincinnati (when he will have all Masters tournaments included in his ranking, and all his points from the winning streak when he was wandering around playing nothing tournaments in America (while everyone else was at the Olympics) will have gone). I don't think he'll drop further than that, he's consistent enough against the lower ranked players, but it's like as soon as he sees a number next to his opponent's name his brain just stops. Unless something big changes on that front, I just cannot see him staying in the top ten for much longer. We'll see how good my predictions are come August.
Well I think that's all there is to say about the different tournament types.
Now on to surfaces, which is something people seem to ignore (apart from when they are calling someone a clay-courter. Why is it that the terms "clay court specialist" seems to exist, and seems to have some negative connotations, but no one ever talks in the same way about "hard court specialists"? Maybe it's just that there are so bloody many of them now that it would have to be used for about half of the tour. There are so few "all surface players", which is why I find this really interesting.
First, we need to look at how many points are available on each surface, coz it's the most uneven distribution imaginable (which I really hate, but I'll talk more about that later). January is hard court. February is mostly hard, with a couple of clay tournaments in South America. March is hard, April/May is clay. June is grass (WOO, a whole... 1 month). July is 50/50 hard and clay. August-November is ALL hard. That's 7 months on hard, 3 months on clay, and a month on grass. So that's roughly 60% hard, 30% clay, 10% grass. Great. Coz that's fair. That said, the hard court season is maybe spread out a bit more than clay and grass (the clay season in particular is pretty much solid), so maybe there's a bit less hard and a bit more of the other two, but it's close enough.
Anyway that means that the top 3 are doing pretty well in terms of spreading their points out over all surfaces. I mean, Roger and Rafa both OWNED EVERYTHING on grass and clay (with Rafa winning the most points it is physically possible to get on grass), so that skews their points a little bit away from the hard court, and Nole fucked up Wimbledon (which you can't really make up for elsewhere - lose early at Wimbledon and your grass points aren't gonna be good - fortunately he still had the Queens final, so it's not too bad), but the three of them are about as close to perfect as you can really ask (with Rafa truly showing that he is no longer a "Clay court specialist" by joing the elite 4 who have won a Slam on every surface. Yes, clay is still his best surface, but only in the sense that he is completely unbeatable there, as oppose to just mostly unbeatable). They are the only ones in the top 10 who have done equally well on all surfaces. And they are the top 3. Go figure.
Davydenko has the same problem as Nole - messing up at Wimbledon means the grass points are gone... cept he messed up even more than Nole, and didn't have Queens or anything to add a bit, so his grass points are literally all gone. Just 10 points for y'know... turning up in London. But his clay and hard court are split pretty evenly, just skewed a tiny bit towards the clay side but nothing massive, so he's doing pretty well.
Then of course, we have the hard courters. Mandy. Oh Mandy. If it weren't for the MASSIVE bias towards hard court you would not be #4 in the world. Yeah, his grass isn't bad, considering how hard it is to get points on grass (especially when you have Rafa and Roger storming through every grass tournament saying "YOU CANNOT HAS!"). But clay? And this year was actually his best year so far on clay, with him in the positive for the first time - his career win-loss record on clay is 11-14 (rather amusing, he has actually lost the same number of matches on clay as Rafa. Difference is, Rafa has won 157, rather than... 11 XD). I didn't realise quite how much that is Not His Surface until I was looking on Wikipedia earlier today and saw that record. That is dreadful. Christ, if everything was still natural surfaces he would be SO screwed.
And of course, there's original Andy. Bless him, I was watching his Jonathan Ross interview again yesterday and was giggling at Jonathan asking why he didn't do so well on clay, and asking if it was better suited to "lesser men". Andy's response? No, it's probably harder to win on clay, the points are longer, you have to be fitter... so he's probably the "lesser man" (I love his honesty. He doesn't need to make crap up to put other people down, coz he's awesome anyway, even if he is shit on clay). Mostly I think it's just the fact that his super fast super flat serve doesn't work on clay that really hurts him. That said, looking on Wikipedia, he's got a much better record than Mandy. In fact there's only been one year when he had a negative win-loss (2006, when it was 5-6). But yeah, no one's ever gonna doubt that he's a hard court player. He normally does better on grass, y'know, one bad day is enough to completely and irreparably kill your grass court season.
Del Potro... not much to say. Another one that messed up Wimbledon (it's such a shame that one bad match can so completely kill the grass court season. Why can they not have like 2 more weeks on grass, maybe play a Masters there? Or play Australia on the grass courts at Kooyong again... tho that would take away Rafa's "Slams on all surfaces" record, so we'll leave it). His clay points aren't great, but nor are they dreadful. But so many of his points came from winning all the tiny tournaments in August, so they're all hard court.
Gilles Simon... pretty similar to Del Potro but with a slightly better result in Wimbledon and slightly lower clay results. Had some good results at internationals on clay to make up for his dreadful results in clay Masters (he lost to Mandy in Hamburg ffs)
Nalbandian. Oh dear. Now THERE is a hard court specialist. How strange that the only two Argentinians in the top 10 are hard courters, given that it's a country that usually produces clay courters (see Buenos Aires this week). But I guess it's so bloody difficult to get into the top ten as a clay courter that I shouldn't be surprised. Anyway, everyone knows all the best clay courters are Spanish :P
The only person in the top 10 who is even CLOSE to being a clay courter is Nando... who still has 45% of his points on hard court. And who has only just got into the top ten by getting to the semi-finals in a hard court slam. So obviously he's still doing pretty well on hard court... he's just a bit more consistent on clay.
How sad is it that the only clay court specialist to get to the top ten has to also be a good hard court player, when the rest of the top ten is dominated by people who seem to be lost on the red stuff? And there's no such thing as a grass court specialist anymore - the closest we have are Rafa and Roger, who are just... tennis specialists. Anyone whose best surface is grass is well and truly screwed, coz they have a whole, oooh, 4 weeks to shine. You couldn't get anywhere with that. If the calendar was actually fair, and the natural surfaces were played as much as hard court, the top ten would be very different. People who have only got a hard court game would move right down. People who play well on clay or grass would appear. People like Rafa and Roger and Nole would be even further in front as they show that you have to be able to play every surface equally - and surely they should be rewarded for that. Well obviously they already are being rewarded - like i said, it's no coincidence that the only all-surface players are the top 3 - but I wish they could get more recognition for it.
At the moment you only get the big reward if you are a clay-courter who manages to significantly improve his hard court game (see Rafa), but there is little-to-no motivation for a hard court specialist to improve his clay court game coz you can sit quite happily at #4 without having a clay game at all. You can stay in the top 10 for 7 years (and even reach #1 for a few weeks) whilst being (by your own admission) shit on clay. Of course, it's near impossible to actually improve on grass, coz you're only there for 4 weeks of the year, so you just have to improve your tennis in general and hope that it works when you get to Wimbledon.
Really, if you think about it the natural surfaces should be more difficult, simply because they are natural. With a hard court, the only thing that changes is the speed of the bounce; something which they will get used to during practice, and depending whether it's indoor or outdoor, the weather. But with the natural surfaces there is so much more. You still have the speed of the bounce, but you're also going to get things like the different spin effects from the clay (which kills Andy Roddick's game, but which Rafa has learnt to use to his great advantage). You're going to get that bad bounce when it hits an uneven patch of grass, so you need to have faster reflexes to account for the sudden change (why Roger and Rafa do so well on grass). You're definitely gonna be outdoors, so you need to be able to correct for the wind, contend with the sun and have the mental strength to sit in the locker rooms for an hour without losing concentration while it rains
What does it say that 7/10 of Mandy's titles have been indoor hard court tournaments? The type with the least possible variables - flat bounce, no possibility of bad bounce, no wind turning your winner into a UE and messing up your ball toss when you serve, no sun getting in your eyes and making shadows across the court. I'm not saying it's easy to win an indoor tournament, but I can't help but think it's gotta take a lot more to win a clay, grass, or even outdoor hard court tournament, when you need to have the reflexes to correct for all the changes, the mental strength not to get frustrated when you get a bad bounce that makes it impossible for you to reach a ball, and the ability to work out how to correct your shots so that when the wind catches the ball it still lands inside the lines.
Anyway, it will be interesting to see what happens in April, when the European clay season starts. Should be interesting
Ok, I was expecting this post to be long, but I didn't realise quite how much I can ramble about this. I don't think I missed anything, tho knowing me I probably did. If anyone actually managed to get through this post without losing the will to live I will be most impressed XD
...god I'm such a geek. Ah well. TBF, this posting has been in the back of my mind for so long, it just got a bit... overgrown.
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on 2009-02-17 07:10 pm (UTC)I definetely agree that the grass players get shafted, it does suck that there's basically Wimbly and Queens/Halle that they can play and that's literally it. Bad times.
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on 2009-02-17 07:52 pm (UTC)Yeah, other than Wimbledon there are like, 5 other tournaments played on grass (all in the two weeks before Wimbledon, so it's literally 4 weeks and then nothing). I understand why they might choose to make a tournament hard court, coz obviously it's gonna me so much easier to maintain the court and stuff. But I so wish there could be just a few more grass and clay tournaments, coz how much more interesting would that be, rather than month after month after month of hard court matches (also, it's surely gotta be better for the players - do they really want to be spending 7 months of the year running around on concrete?)
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on 2009-02-17 09:52 pm (UTC)I guess we shall see what happens with Mandy during the clay court season and if he can hold his position in the top ten. Rafa will be scary as ususal in his demolition job of the tour lol.
I get your point about Mandys titles but to be fair, the conditions are the same for every player so where Andy doesnt get the sun in his eyes, neither does his apponent so its 5o/5o over what affect that has.
I didnt realise Nalby was quite so awful. Jeez his record is crap! *iz shocked*
You have me all excited for the claycourt season now to see how it affects the top 10. XD
Did you hear about Roger pulling out of DC and Dubai? OMG! I hope he isnt all depressd and stuff. Mein gott. *wibbles*
Thanks for taking the time to put this together though. It really is interesting. You should put it on a few comms and let others know. Its really facinating.
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on 2009-02-18 08:21 am (UTC)Not even that - USO was grass until '75 (then it changed to some weird type of clay I don't understand, then 3 years later to hard), and Australia was played on the grass courts in Kooyong until '87 :( At least Wimbledon will never change. Thank God for us Brits and our occasional inability to let go of tradition. I just don't understand why they need 6 hard court Masters, but not a single grass one.
Oh Mandy will stay in the top 10, since he's defending next to no points in the clay season. It'll just be kinda funny to see the #4 player in the world going out in the first couple of rounds of every tournament for a few months (unless he's done something to massively improve his clay game over the past year). This is why he can't get close to challenging Nole yet tho, coz there's three months of the year where he gets next to no points. It's also why it kinda annoyed me when people were going on about how he improved so much after Wimbledon... when EVERYTHING was on HC. Not that I'm saying he hasn't improved, but it'd be no different to saying of Nicolas Almagro (a real clay court specialist) "Oh he really improved after Miami". No one would say that, because everyone knows he is a clay courter. But when it's hard court it's a whole different matter, because HC takes up such a huge proportion of the year (sorry, bit of a mini-rant there).
Oh absolutely, like I said, I'm not saying it's easy winning indor HC, not at all. I just think the other tournaments are more... I dunno, mentally challenging? I'm being no good with words on this one, maybe I should leave it.
Thing with Nalby is, he seems to just wander around winning all the tournaments no one else goes to/tournaments at the end of the year when all the top players are broken. But I found it kinda amusing when people were suggesting that when Argentina hosted the DC final last year they should've put it on clay, coz generally Argentinians do well on that surface... clearly that's not the case with their top 2 players (also, no one in their right mind is gonna voluntarily play Spain on clay. It's just not gonna happen, even without Rafa. And when they had to choose the venue Rafa was still going. No one is gonna sit there and say "You know what, I think our best bet for this trophy is for us to play on clay against the guy with the 92% record on that surface. Yeah, we're just THAT clever")
;____; I'd not heard about that *runs off to MTF* Noooo, back problems again? *sadface*
Thank you, I'm glad it was appreciated. I was a bit worried people might find it too long and rambly... or just think I was talking complete bullshit >.
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on 2009-02-18 01:12 pm (UTC)I can't wait for the clay season though. Imagine the press if Mandy goes awol because of the clay. *hides* It will be unbareable though funny cos I bet he will be Scottish againXD That always makes me laugh. sorry, minirant!
Yeah spain on clay equals dangerous. Even the Argentines have more sense than that. Just :P
I'm still reeling from the fact that he's out. O_o
No, no, it was really interesting and well worth all the effortXD
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on 2009-02-18 02:43 pm (UTC)To be fair to Andy, I just checked who he lost to on clay last year, and most of them are pretty impressive players. I mean, it's not like you can really criticize someone for losing in Hamburg to Rafa XD Previous years were pathetic tho, so it will be interesting to see how much he's improved this year.
And yeah, it does seem to be "LOOK, A BRITISH MAN WON!" and "How sad, a Scottish man lost" >.<
Best thing is tho, Spain seem to be the best at producing all surface players. I mean, Rafa, Nando and Feli on their team (especially with Nando playing as he is now), they're pretty damn brilliant on every surface.
I do hope he's ok and it is just a precautionary thing. I mean, he's gonna want to be in the best shape possible for IW and Miami, coz he could gain a lot there. But I can't believe everyone's spent the past week wondering if Rafa will play Dubai and DC and then Roger turns around and drops this on us D:
YAY! *feels appreciated* XD