Wow. You really are the King of the Stats!

Oops

Drew wrote:

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I have sent a link to this thread to the LTA.....

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I was trying to work out why you might have chosen this thread to do that with - I'm guessing the line about Brazil in the opening post?

In fact, what I didn't mention was that half of the additional Futures in Brazil are still to come, so I think they might have one or two more additional players in the top 500 by the year end.

Of course, if the reason why the Brazilian Tennis Federation is holding more Futures is to try to accelerate their players up the rankings, they have the big advantage over GB that Brazil is remote enough from most other big tennis-playing nations (apart from Argentina, which often has Futures in the same weeks - oddly less than GB This year, but they didn't have any Futures in Argentina before May for some reason - since then there has been one in BRA almost every week and the equivalent of one in ARG every two weeks) so Brazilians tend to make up at least half the main draw at these events, which is far more unusual over here.

One of the best things about this year is that we have more Challenger level male players than we did 12 months ago (even if the autumn Challenger results haven't been too great) and a few just out of juniors who have made big strides this year, some of whom you'd hope will manage to do a Dan Evans type move next year and start to play more Challengers too.
 
So I'd really like to see the number of home Challengers go back up, and for the majority of them to be played in venues where Brits have traditionally done well. e.g. I seem to remember (though haven't checked) that events in Jersey haven't tended to produce many GB points in the past either.

Of course it shouldn't be an option for Brits at Challenger level to only play in the UK and stay in that 'comfort zone', but even if some extra Challengers were added back, you can't just stay at home when you're at Challenger level whatever happens. Indeed, helping players to save on travel costs by having more home Challengers might make it more feasible for them to choose the best overseas Challengers to go to in order to maximise ranking points instead of being more driven by which events they can afford to go to.

-- Edited by steven at 01:57, 2008-11-20

steven wrote:

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Drew wrote:

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I have sent a link to this thread to the LTA.....

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I was trying to work out why you might have chosen this thread to do that with - I'm guessing the line about Brazil in the opening post?

No it was the fact that France and Spain are top of the tree...they have great access to tennis courts...they are everwhere and costs are at a level that ordinary folk can pay easily. Spain does not even have a Slam to make squillions of euros !

With the finance available we should be doing better than we are.

Average Mens Top 10 Players Ranking (21-43)
17/11/2008

21(22)  CHI    396.6(439.5)
22(21)  SUI    417.4(394.4)
23(23)  UKR   421.4(486.0)
24(28)  POL   480.1(559.9)
25(25)  KOR  482.3(517.4)
26(26)  MEX   549.7(527.9)
27(30)  CAN   580.3(612.2)
28(27)  IND    583.8(531.0)
29(24)  COL   609.3(507.6)
30(29)  RSA   730.2(566.7)
31(35)  ECU   734.7(786.5)
32(34)  CHN   758.9(767.1)
33(37)  SLO   759.2(895.1)
34(31)  MAR   761.6(628.4)
35(32)  ISR    774.2(657.0)
36(38)  VEN   815.2(895.8)
37(40)  BLR   858.7(934.6)
38(39)  BUL   861.9(902.3)
39(NE)  POR   944.9(N/A)
40(NE)  PER   947.7(N/A)
41(NE)  HUN   996.1(N/A)
42(41)  THA  1113.0(1050.6)
43(NE)  EGY  1130.1(N/A)

Also did a quick check against the new DC rankings

7 countries (ESP, FRA, ARG, USA, RUS, GER, AUS) are in the top 10 in both the DC rankings and Grundon's averages

Czech Republic (11th in the DC rankings) and Croatia (12th in the averages) are close to being in the top 10 for both.

Slovakia (19th in the averages), Sweden (20th in the averages), Brazil (21st in the DC rankings) and Italy (28th in the DC rankings) are the only outliers.

Slovakia are only in the top 10 of the DC rankings thanks to their run to the DC Final in 2005, when they had five home ties in a row (including the WG PO in 2004) which they were able to play on fast indoor courts, three of them against clay court specialist nations. Sweden are there mainly thanks to Bjorkman and ToJo (who have now slipped out of the top 100 in singles) and to doing well in doubles and are unlikely to do as well in the years ahead.

As for the countries doing a lot better in the averages than in DC, Italy are famously rubbish at DC (they also don't have anyone in the top 30, which doesn't help in DC) and Brazil are on the rise, so their DC Ranking (which covers the last 4 years, weighted so that on average the results being taken into account are 18 months old) may take a while to catch up.