Week 43 - ATP 500 Series: Swiss Indoors - Basel (indoor hard) - doubles

Stircrazy · Tennis legend

Week 43 - ATP 500 Series: Swiss Indoors - Basel (indoor hard) - doubles

huntley93 · Strong Club Player

hang on, how can 2 pairs have the same ranking?

Stircrazy · Tennis legend

huntley93 wrote:
hang on, how can 2 pairs have the same ranking?

Easy peasy, huntley. As it's doubles, below the top echelon, where pairings are generally established, the individual doubles ranking of each player in any given team is added together to give their combined ranking (hence the "CR"), so different permutations of different players can easily result in the same combined ranking. Hope that's clear! wink

huntley93 · Strong Club Player

Stircrazy wrote:
huntley93 wrote:
hang on, how can 2 pairs have the same ranking?
Easy peasy, huntley. As it's doubles, below the top echelon, where pairings are generally established, the individual doubles ranking of each player in any given team is added together to give their combined ranking (hence the "CR"), so different permutations of different players can easily result in the same combined ranking. Hope that's clear!

ah makes sense, never understood the doubles ranking thanks, glad someones finally explained it,

johnnylad · Tennis legend

huntley93 wrote:
hang on, how can 2 pairs have the same ranking?

Its easy peasy Huntley. Because its doubles they're allowed to be completely misleading

indiana · Tennis legend

They are fine for folk that can understand them and read them in context, which is plenty people in here.

So they are not going away anytime soon !

johnnylad · Tennis legend

Hmmmmm - looking back I have clearly remembered a few things wrong.

Seems we didn't even include dubs rankings on threads until the last couple of years anyway.

My dissatisfaction stems from the use of CR instead of WR - I cannot see that it adds anything. I think it is clunky because it raises more questions.

WR shows you the world ranking of the doubles partnership in a given match with no confusion.

CR:

1. Newer people are always asking what it stands for because it is not a normal indicator. WR on the other hand is a well known abbreviation.
2. Tenuous this one - it looks a bit more like CH at a glance which is used for different but relevant indicator.
3. It often leads to questions about what is being combined (doubles rankings, singles rankings or best of both combo) (If it does not actually do this again forgive me for remembering wrong)
4. It is clearly my own problem but the bee in my bonnet is more of a be(e)hemoth in this case. I just don't like it and think we should have WR. (like in this thread)

-- Edited by johnnylad on Sunday 20th of October 2013 05:37:17 PM

steven · Tennis legend

johnnylad wrote:
...
but can somebody settle another nagging annoyance/memory - have singles rankings ever been used to make up part of a doubles pairs' world ranking for a given event i.e. dubs No7 playing with singles No74 having a ranking for the tournament of 81, or have they been used for entry list purposes but not for the tournament itself, or both, or neither?

The better of the two rankings is used for each player for entry purposes (so you can have a combined entry ranking made up of one player's singles ranking and the other player's doubles ranking - that's how the Murray brothers used to get into the Masters events together) but for seeding purposes (and on any drawsheets where doubles rankings appear), only combined doubles rankings are used.

Team (i.e. Doubles Race) rankings are only used to decide which teams take part in the World Tour Finals.

-- Edited by steven on Sunday 20th of October 2013 08:01:35 PM

johnnylad · Tennis legend

But why did they suddenly appear in the past 12 months. It wasn't broken before so why "fix" it?

indiana · Tennis legend

No harm in additional information, which while I would agree are more worthy of note at higher rather than lower levels, to say they are "completely misleading" is a nonsense in my opinion.

Feel free to just ignore them.

johnnylad · Tennis legend

Its not additional - it was a replacement that did not improve anything

indiana · Tennis legend

Replaced what ? All I am aware of is at one stage we changed from calling the combined ranking "WR" to "CR", but I am not aware of us actually using anything else ??

indiana · Tennis legend

I probably have a vested interest here, because it is myself that suggested changing the combined ranking figure from "WR" to "CR".

1, "WR" may indeed be a more widely undersood term, leading surely to more chance of the doubles ranking being misinterpreted. If a pair are quoted as WR / CR 57, they are not really world ranked 57 in the sense of 57th best pair in the world, generally they will be much better than that. "CR" conveys what it is, a combined ( added ) ranking. It looks possible ( sorry if I am wrong ) that you yourself didn't realise that that is all the old "WR" in doubles was.

2. The preference I see for "CR" over "WR" for reasons given is not negated by any tenuous approximation to "CH".

3. Fair enough if it leads to questions about what is being combined. Thus more understanding about the figure rather than it being preceded by "WR" and understood even less !

I really do think that "CR" was an improvement over "WR" as a prefix for exactly the same figure ( the addition of the two individual doubles world rankings ). Thus I made the suggestion, which was taken up, and most folk seem quite happy with it. I guess if folk didn't generally like the change idea, it would never have happened at the time.

steven · Tennis legend

I was in favour of the change too. It doesn't really bother me that much either way but:

1) it's definitely more informative to have the ranking numbers than not
2) "WR" in doubles caused at least as much confusion as "CR" does (just in different ways), else the idea of changing wouldn't have come up in the first place
3) if you try to explain both of them, "CR" seems to make a bit more sense

I don't think there's any problem if it leads to questions - in fact, it's probably better that people ask what "CR" means and get the full story in reply (with other people reading the answer too) than that they just assume that "WR" means something that it doesn't really mean in this case.

The same happens with my tweets (which are even more constrained due to the 140-character limit) - hopefully most people get the hang of the frequently-used abbreviations over time, while if someone asks about one of them (as, thankfully, a few people are brave enough to do!), then unless it's a really obscure (i.e. one tweet-specific or, er, stupid) question (when I just reply directly to the person who asked), I tend to assume one person asking means at least 100 other people are wondering the same thing and tweet the reply in a way that allows everyone to see it.

indiana · Tennis legend

In truth Steven, I am not overbotheted myself about "CR" over "WR", and wouldn't go to the barricades about it.

I will though go to the barricades over any suggestion that "CR" is "completely misleading" or was never a decent suggestion in the first place.