It is reasonably clear from the graph above that the numbers of GB men at the each of the ranking levels considered is closely linked to the total number of weeks of Challengers, Futures and Satellites held in the UK over the previous 12 months (the purple line), with the correlation particularly close over the first four years of the period.

The correlation with the total value of tournaments held (i.e. the red line, which treats 25K+H Challengers as 50Ks, though you need to multiply the axis values by 20000 to get the actual totals) is also close, except over the two years from the end of 2005 to the end of 2007, when the total prize money stayed high but the ranking situation got worse.

In my opinion, this worsening of the ranking situation while total $ remained high was at least partly due to the switch to holding only 15K Futures over that period (i.e. less Futures for the same total amount of money), which increased the proportion of non-GB players in these tournaments and drastically reduced the chances of new British players getting into the top 1000 in the first place, with knock-on effects further up the scale in later 6-month periods. While I imagine the switch to all 15Ks was well-intentioned, this was an issue that a few of us were already posting our concerns about in early 2006 long before we had the benefit of hindsight.

Hence, I welcome the fact that more recently the LTA has switched back to a mix of 10Ks and 15Ks, but if the rationale for cutting back on home events was that the ranking situation got worse from early 2006 - mid 2008 when the amount of money being put into home tournaments remained historically high, I believe that is a red herring due to the mistake of running only 15Ks for a while.

The graph suggests that as long as Futures and Challengers are run at a variety of levels so that the whole of the 'pyramid' of GB pros have a chance to benefit, additional home events will result in an overall rankings benefit, as countries like France, Spain, Brazil, etc, have found.

Of course, what happens even further down the 'pyramid' is at least as important long-term, but the point I am trying to make is that holding more pro events in the UK does help if the right mix of events is held.

I do not believe that holding more home events should be a disincentive to players to travel overseas as well (even if it is felt that it is, linking WCs more heavily to points gained overseas would be a more positive way of rewarding those who are more adventurous than punishing the adventurous as well as the non-adventurous by reducing the number of UK events) and indeed holding more home events should make it a bit easier for players who want to test themselves overseas to gain some of funds needed to do so in the best possible way, i.e. by winning matches.

A version of this with the data used included as well can be found at http://www.britishtennis.net/gbtop25m/gbevents.htm (I'll link to it from the stats page too once you've had a chance to agree with or blow holes in the argument!)

Very interesting. It does make sense, you only have to look at the likes of Katie on the womens side to see what it can do for a player

Simple answer? Yes.

I am a master of analysis!

imoen wrote:

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I can work out that roughly speaking, all the lines go up and down together so presumably that proves that more events means more/better rankings. However, that's not exclusively the case (latter half of '07 rankings go down, tournaments goes up and then a year later, tournies go down, rankings go up).

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I was talking about the general trend - if the graphs matched exactly, that would be spooky - and I think the thing you mention was still a result of the Futures all being 15Ks policy which led to points being very hard to come by, especially at the lower levels, and quite a few players retiring. 

imoen wrote:

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It also begs the question, which came first? Ie, is the drop in rankings a sympton of a drop in tournaments or is the drop in tournaments a result of the drop in rankings? (of course, all that is based on the idea that what I think it says is in fact what it says which I'm not totally confident about!!)

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 The drop in tournaments came first - remember that at any given point on the graph, the no. of tournaments is the number held in the previous 12 months and the no. at each level of the rankings is the number at the end of that period.

 

I agree that getting more players into the top 100 has to be the ultimate aim and that the correlations we're discussing here are only a tiny part of the overall story, but because we've only had one player break into the top 100 in the last decade (and he's about as special a case as you can get), it's impossible to do an analysis of that, so we have to start somewhere.

In any country, tennis is a pyramid, and more kids playing (which I think everyone is agreed is a pre-requisite to getting more success in the long-term) is likely to lead to more good juniors, then to more top 1000 players and more top 500 players, which will tend to lead to more top 250 players and thus increase the pool of players who have a realistic chance of getting into the top 100 at some point.

All kinds of things can affect whether top 250 players do reach the top 100 or not (and we don't have a very good record in this context, obviously), which is why it's important to get as many players up within striking distance as possible while they are still relatively young. There's also more chance for positive peer pressure if there are lots of players doing well and we know how important that can be. I'm sure France and Spain didn't suddenly have lots of top 100 players overnight and started off by getting more players into the top 1000, then into the top 500 and so on.

Of course, if all of the improvement in GB players' rankings due to holding more tournaments in the UK was artificial, then it wouldn't be worth doing, but it's not as if GB events don't attract plenty of interest from overseas players (unlike, say, the events in Brazil) and I certainly wouldn't say they were weaker than average. The point of having more home events is to give players more chances of picking up points, when as far as I can gather, a lot of them (unless they have rich parents) are held back in the number of events they can enter by the costs of travelling to overseas tournaments.

If you look at the numbers in the top 250 in the graph (which tends to mean Challenger players, who have to get a fair proportion of their points from overseas events whatever happens, so can't just be propped up by home events), they appear to have at least some correlation to the numbers in the top 1000 about two years earlier.