Coup Droit wrote:

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Just seen that if Mirabelle beats Matallah, she plays Barbieri in round 2 of the qualies.

Barbieri is WR 204 (CH 170) !!!! What the flip is she doing in a 10k quali draw ????

How is my poor girl ever expected to get her third counter . . . :(

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 Barbieri is not on the list of acceptances so she will have been a late entry. Late entries quite often get put in the qualifiers. I remember one of our girls withdrawing from a tournament and then changing her mind at the last minute and getting back into the qualifying event as a WC number 1 seed.

A ramble, mostly off topic...

The follow on question being: why would players in that rankings bracket ever play a $10K?
It really shouldn't happen.

I suppose,some legitimate reasons, of varying credence, for playing a $10K at this rank might include:

• Recovering from, or returning from, injury
• Local tournament / special personal association to the tournament
• Honouring a prior agreement to compete

Players should though - by ambition hopefully, but if not, then by design of the pyramid structure of tournament tiers and entry regulations - be aiming higher.

As there are no rules to prevent women players (bar the top 10) entering any event they choose, even if they are overqualified, it continues to happen.

And, so, entries are often entirely disproportionate to the level of event.
eg: Top 250 players in the lowest tier of professional events, often under subscribed Qualifying at far flung internationals, and any $125, $100, $75K

The risk/reward mechanism for entering those events more suited to your level is not working.

Part of this is the WTA insistence that their events have nice round numbers for rewards at big events, and that GS have 1000/2000 for finalists/winners.
In order to take in the full pyramid of tiers in womens tennis, and make sufficient distinction between the value of progressing through each round in each, including qualies - from winning a $10K qualies match through to winning a Grand Slam - that's approximately 180 grades of distinction.
2000 units is not a big enough scale to fit all that in whilst allowing sufficient space to fully reflect the relative difficulty of achievement between the levels.

So, clusters of 'soft' points appear in the structure, and people take advantage of that - travelling, as they are wont to do, the shortest distance between any to points.
Winning a $15K at ~WR250 is a very realistic proposition. It gives (very nearly) the same points as winning a couple of rounds at a $125 - far tougher.
Winning a $25K gives more points than making the SF of a $75K +H etc

Successful ambition should provide rewards so far outstripping playing it safe that, if you want to progress in the rankings, you should have to play the next tier of tournaments and above.

I'd make the scale much larger, say 10,000 points for winning a Grand Slam, down to 1 point for winning a round of qualies in a $10K. Every professional match gets a reward.
If winning a $10K were, say, 25 points, but winning one round of a $25K were, say, 27 points, the risk reward would drive people of a suitable level to the $25K's. This would continue all up the scale. The players that were good enough would migrate naturally upwards, not just at the very top end of the scale, but graded all the way throughout.
It's broadly true that there are large bands of rankings ~1000-1200, ~800-1000 etc where there isn't any real difference in the quality of tow players that spend their time in that division, the fluctuation in ranking is due to the arbitrary factors of the tennis existence.
Increasing the distinction between tiers of events would make the groups much smaller - a player ranked 850 would be demonstrably better in the long term than one ranked 975. They would have earned larger points at levels of higher competition mandated by players hunger to play at the very highest level they could because playing at a lower level was little more than a waste of time - the rewards offering no chance of progression. Whereas, success at the next level instantly would make them more distinct from the players below them.

There will still be the dreaded over-ranked player.
You will always get players that get soft draws at big events, get a big win, a good WC, or are an unexpected recipient of a RET or walkover in a match they had no probable chance of winning, and so again will claim a big haul of points in one off situations.
They would get preferential seeded draws in lower tier events by 'virtue' of having the big points from their fortune on their record.
They're unlikely to be able to sustain that ranking or the level of play that would be suggested by it though.
They'd also be easy to identify with bigger points gaps in the scores awarded per gradation even if all their results came from $10-$25K's. If a players counters are of grades x, x, x, x*20, x, x, x etc. it's easy to spot the outlier there. where as now its all x because the grouping is so tight.

Also the availability of events across the spectrum of tiers is not working - you need more events, of all grades, with more regularity, in all geographic zones. Converting up from the plethora of $10K is, I accept, not an easy task.

I'll stop now, by suggesting that the current situation, where at least 75% of all women players (even those that get a ranking), spend almost the entirety of their careers in $10K is, surely, unbalanced.
It's not so much a pyramid - of any base to height ratio - it's an inverted letter "T".

Edit: Posted the text twice! Imagine that! All of the above... again!