I was talking to Harry Skinner amongst others when I was in Portugal recently. Harry Meehan was there too and we were discussing how much easier it was to get on the rankings now than say, 10 years ago. The blame was put very much on the shoulders of places like Sharm and Antalya for putting on their 52 futures per year and if you entered enough of them, you would soon get a lucky draw, a retirement or a couple of local WCs and "hey presto" you have a ranking.
Harry S was saying that when he got his first ranking point, he came "straight into the charts" at around the 1400s mark with just that one solitary point. Now there are nearer 2250 players on the rankings. Harry M was of the opinion that the Men should adopt a similar system to the Women where you need a certain number of points or you have to win a minimum 3 MD matches before you get a ranking. Where we were in Portugal, there were players ranked in the 700s still playing qualies, and the consensus was that "this is the way it should be".
Anyway, good luck to them all this week. I know Beechy is out there with Joel again so I am hoping for some decent results.
Edit
Having said all that, it appears that the top seed in Qualies here, is yet another "ringer" ranked at WR 295 (it shouldn't be allowed ) and the next two seeds are also inside the top 500. No idea how the MD looks as the entry list doesn't appear on the ITF site.
-- Edited by Bob in Spain on Sunday 20th of March 2016 04:03:53 PM
Decent fight in the end from Joel but it wasn't quite enough. He pulled it back from 0-5* to 4-5* but his higher ranked opponent held on to win 6-3 6-4