13 May 2009 - women's #1 thots

13 May 2009

Dinara certainly does seem to be trying to live up to her #1 ranking. She is now the bookies favourite at Roland Garros, and she is guaranteed to hold onto top spot at least through RG.

I think this issue of #1 without a GS tournament should really have come to the fore regarding Lindsay Davenport. The year in question was 2004. I'm still not sure who is popularly regarded as #1 for that year. The WTA computer listed Davenport in the top spot at the end of the year. The WTA player of the year award (issued in April of the next year, I believe, and well before she first reached #1 on the computer in Aug 2005) named Sharapova. The ITF selected Myskina (who never reached computer #1). The highest number of average WTA points per tournament played belonged to Henin in 2004. Davenport didn't even make a GS final in 2004. By contrast Dinara has played two GS finals in the past year and is defending 4 titles (3 of them premier events).

Nonetheless, because Davenport had won GS events in the past (last one was 2000), people weren't as up in arms about it as they are with Safina and Jankovic. Several observers have advocated for clearly regarding that the computer ranking rewards a year's worth of performance and that the correlation between ranking points and GS performance, while strong, is not absolute.

I think it is important to remember that the player with the most potential is not necessarily #1. Sure it's possible that Serena Williams, (or Hantuchova! or Wozniacki!!) might have the best game of any current player on one particular day if they were playing at their absolute best, but being #1 is about realizing your potential. As long as the ranking system is fair and reasonable (that question is, of course, up for debate), the #1 ranking recognizes the actual accomplishments of the last year, not the most talented player. That seems fair to me...

And now for the trivia buffs:
1. Although fans now seem to insist that the woman regarded as #1 for the year have won a Grand Slam title in that year, it used to be common to regard the Wimbledon winner as #1 for the year. In fact since the advent of rankings (about 1919 - these were subjective ranking of "experts") until the open era (1968) there were only five times that a woman won Wimbledon without being regarded as #1 for the year: 1926 - McKane; 1931 - Aussem; 1948, 1949 - Brough; 1962 - Hantze Susman.

2. The first year a woman was regarded as #1 for the year winning only the US (of the four GS events that year), was 1931 - Wills Moody. It also happened in 1948 - Osborne; 1977, 1978 - Evert; 1998 - Davenport; and possibly 2008 - SWilliams (if you accept the WTA player of the year award...)

3. The first year a woman was regarded as #1 for the year winning only Roland Garros (of the four GS events that year), was 1926 - Lenglen. It also happened in 1987 - Graf, and 2006 - Henin.

4. The first year a woman was regarded as #1 for the year winning only the Australian (of the four GS events that year), was 1990 - Graf. It also happened in 1999 - Hingis.
In fact, it wasn't until 1950 that for the first time the woman winning the Australian was regarded as #1 for the year - Brough.

5. Lastly the first and only year in which the popularly regarded #1 for the year didn't win any GS event was 2004 - Davenport (depending, of course, on who you believe was #1 that year...)