I am no great supporter of Etienne de Villiers and his proposed changes, but if Hamburg had won it would have been a travesty of justice - and the ensuing chaos doesn't bear thinking about.

Exactly what I said when the idea of doubling ATP points was first mooted. You just can't do that without doubling slam points or they are degraded, nor without upgrading Challenger and Future points as otherwise it is going to be impossible for players at that level to move up.

The top players of the moment may be the names the masses remember, but in the nature of things they will get older and slip down the rankings or retire - where are their replacements going to come from if Challenger players cannot get enough points, even by winning several tournaments, to move up? The top 100 will just stagnate.

I know they're going to award 2000 points for slam winners, so the sensible thing would seem to be to double all the points at the lower levels as well (and maybe add 1 point for qualifying for a Future - well, we can dream!) and double all the 2008 points at the year end so that they are comparable.

If they don't double the points at the lower levels, then the differentials will end up more like they are in the women's game, where winning a 10K only gets you 6 points (currently 12 for the men) c.f. winning a slam getting you 1000. I think that would be a bad thing (e.g. for the lower-ranked players, it would mean a lucky draw as a WC in a slam would distort things even more than it does at the moment - though that is already true for the woman, I believe), though it might tempt Challenger level players to enter ATP qualifying more often - would that be a good thing?

On the other hand, doubling Challenger points would make winning a 150K+H super Challenger worth almost as much as winning a 250 event, which they probably aren't that keen on.

An even bigger issue is what they do with 2008 points. Would they, from the start of 2009, double points gained in 2008 from the type of events they are going to doubled for in 2009? If not, I imagine that Rafa, having won two slams this year, is going to be pretty annoyed that winning the AO next year will effectively be worth two 2008 slam wins through the early part of the year.

Also, if they double the points for all events but don't double points gained in 2008 from the start of 2009, then by the end of the main clay court season, the clay courters are going to have a massive unfair advantage over those who tend to do better from the grass court season onwards, e.g. the Brits, because the points from the first half of 2009 will effectively be double-weighted compared to the points for the second half of 2008.

Of course, it's more than possible that the marketing guys thought up this 1000/500/250 thing and that nobody with any power has given the slightest thought to the practical implications yet ...

Give us an S, give us an H, give us an A, give us an M, give us a B, give us an L, give us an E, give us an S ... and what do you get?  

I hope against hope that they have thought this through and will prove my hunch wrong.

-- Edited by steven at 15:20, 2008-08-07

LOL I'd written "hint: the Count would know it as a shabmels" but then deleted it because I'd already accused you of losing to 14 year olds and I thought that was probably enough for one day!

Naw, Count, Steven's usually up to something terrifically clever (or abstruse!). I think it's code for being nasty to someone he doesn't like:

BLAME SHS, perhaps,
or SLAM SHEB (maybe that was supposed to be DC, but he's mistransposed the D & B)
or maybe it was meant to be something to do with tennis, such as
SMASHBLE?