Strongest Nation?

JonH · All-time great

RE: Strongest Nation?

AliBlahBlah · All-time great

JonH wrote:
AliBlahBlah wrote:
[...]
I was hoping France would get Spain this week, not to be!
If you are happy to do this weekly, that is great but I wondered if it was a lot of work for you - with the movements that take place, once a month would be sufficient I am sure! But it is still interesting and on the ladies side, a chance we could maybe catch Belgium sometime in the lead up to the clay court season perhaps?

Takes about 2 minutes to download the data and update the source files.
Takes about 10 minutes to transmit the data to the server - but all I do is press one button and wait, and go off and do other things

I think Belgium are stronger generally on clay in the ladies side than are we, and would be surprised if we made much ground on them there. Johanna could improve her clay points, but she can't really improve her ranking as a result. Quite a lot of our 2-10 players scarcely played on clay last year, so if they played, and did particularly well, then it would have an effect. There's a reason why they choose to avoid the devil dust though
In order to catch them, our player just have to do better at tournaments than they did last year. Early signs this year aren't that promising - I've recorded all details from every WTA/ITF womens match this year and am messing around with it trying to find a useful way to display anything, but it needs more data to see patterns, so maybe around Roland Garros time.

JonH · All-time great

JonH wrote:
AliBlahBlah wrote:
13/02 Updated: https://public.tableau.com/views/20170213ATPWTACountryStrengths/ATPCountryRankings?:embed=y&:display_count=yes

ATP
Serbia overtakes Japan to claim 9th place by a razors edge.
Otherwise all deathly quiet at the top.
There is still less than one average ranking place between Spain and France in top spot, but Spain cling on.
France are #1 nation if you make the number of players used for the average 4,5, or 12-30 though. Only for a sample of 6-11 are Spain top.
GB stay in 13th for the 6th consecutive week (i.e. since the beginning)
Avg. rank improves from 207 to 205. Evans, Edmunds, Bedene, Corrie contributing to negate falls further down.
Behind us, Brazil also improve two ranking points to 233; ahead of us, Belgium stay on 176 average.
We're not gong to move for about 6 months, exceptional circumstances aside.

WTA
Italy tie Spain to claim equal 9th place.
Australia continue to power ahead, moving up another place, to 13th, having started in 17th. No other country has moved more than one place either way.
GB stay in 15th place.
Avg. Ranking of top 10 players improves from 216 last week, to 214 now - Naomi, Mandy & Katie B the main determinants there.
One place ahead, the Belgian avg. rank stays constant at 208. One place behind us, Ukraine drop from 218 to 220 (look at the weird split in the Ukranian player distribution!)
GB stay right on the median line when all ranked players are considered. We are exactly average.
I was hoping France would get Spain this week, not to be!
If you are happy to do this weekly, that is great but I wondered if it was a lot of work for you - with the movements that take place, once a month would be sufficient I am sure! But it is still interesting and on the ladies side, a chance we could maybe catch Belgium sometime in the lead up to the clay court season perhaps?

I notice Serbia and Japan have Criss crossed quite a bit so far this season. I imagine that is due to a lot of movements in the Japanese players, just from history, but not sure if that is the case?

Biggest movement seems to be Belarus over whole season, dropped a few places to 32nd, not sure if that is due to one player in freefall at the top (who is the Belarus top singles player, my mind tells me Mirnyi but it may be a while since he played singles?)

AliBlahBlah · All-time great

There are different tabs at the top of the visualisation, and one allows you to check out the top players per country. You can select the countries involved, the number of players per country, and wind them back and forward through time. Tab: ATP Relative Player Positions Per Ranking
There's one for the WTA too.

In this specific case, Belarus' top players now are Ilya Ivashka ~WR179 & Uladzimir Ignatik ~WR190
Their fall seems to have been driven by a large fall in their 3rd through 9th placed players, all of whom have slumped. For example, BLR 9th place was WR 744 at the start of the year, it's 1,035 in the lates rankings!

JPN vs. SRB is largely affected by the return and form of Tipsarevic moving from 144 to 95 throughout YTD. This has counter acted softness in the Serbian 5-8 spots.
On the Japanese side, Nishioka's ranking has fluctuated up and down 100 - 82 - 100, and their #8, Akira Santillan, has improved from 210 to 180.

the addict · Tennis legend

(who is the Belarus top singles player, my mind tells me Mirnyi but it may be a while since he played singles?)
Certainly has been a while, he hasn't played a ranking tournament since 2008 !

wimdledont · Challenger level

Just had a quick tot-up of the top 10 GB women on 15 Feb 2016, and I get an average of 290 - so a huge amount of progress over the last 12 months, with almost all of our top dozen players moving up signicantly.

Also, 12 months ago, we only had 3 players inside the top 300, and thus insured against injury by having a potential protected ranking. Now there are 7, with another 5 with a realistic hope of making that particular cut.

AliBlahBlah · All-time great

Updated: https://public.tableau.com/views/20170220ATPWTACountryStrengths/ATPCountryRankings?:embed=y&:display_count=yes

ATP
Little movement.
GB stay in 13th.
GB Avg. ranking improves again from 205 to 204; that is now up from 218 at the start of the year.

WTA
GB move up a place, as the Aussies fall back 2. driven by big losses in their 8 (271 to 320) & 9 (310 to 339) positions
GB up to 14th.
GB Avg. Ranking up to a new high for the year, improving from 214 to 212 - incremental improvement across 3-10.

JonH · All-time great

AliBlahBlah wrote:
Updated: https://public.tableau.com/views/20170220ATPWTACountryStrengths/ATPCountryRankings?:embed=y&:display_count=yes

ATP
Little movement.
GB stay in 13th.
GB Avg. ranking improves again from 205 to 204; that is now up from 218 at the start of the year.

WTA
GB move up a place, as the Aussies fall back 2. driven by big losses in their 8 (271 to 320) & 9 (310 to 339) positions
GB up to 14th.
GB Avg. Ranking up to a new high for the year, improving from 214 to 212 - incremental improvement across 3-10.

The GB improvements are actually quite impressive, I agree. 14 places per person on average in the mens, 140 places in total improvement, incl fact that Liam has gone backwards a little and Andy clearly cant move. So 18 or places per player for the other 8 top 10 men is v good.

Similarly, good move by the ladies as well - good start to the year so far backed up by the stats.

JonH · All-time great

JonH wrote:
AliBlahBlah wrote:
Updated: https://public.tableau.com/views/20170220ATPWTACountryStrengths/ATPCountryRankings?:embed=y&:display_count=yes

ATP
Little movement.
GB stay in 13th.
GB Avg. ranking improves again from 205 to 204; that is now up from 218 at the start of the year.

WTA
GB move up a place, as the Aussies fall back 2. driven by big losses in their 8 (271 to 320) & 9 (310 to 339) positions
GB up to 14th.
GB Avg. Ranking up to a new high for the year, improving from 214 to 212 - incremental improvement across 3-10.
The GB improvements are actually quite impressive, I agree. 14 places per person on average in the mens, 140 places in total improvement, incl fact that Liam has gone backwards a little and Andy clearly cant move. So 18 or places per player for the other 8 top 10 men is v good.

Similarly, good move by the ladies as well - good start to the year so far backed up by the stats.

also interesting how it is belgium we are chasing down in both mens and ladies now - we seem to have the edge at the top end of the top ten players v Belgium and then lose out lower down...

AliBlahBlah · All-time great

Updated: https://public.tableau.com/views/20170227ATPWTACountryStrengths/ATPCountryRankings?:embed=y&:display_count=yes

ATP
Deathly Quiet: no change in the top 18.
At the top, Spains ranking lead is increasing over France, in second; they now are 3 avg. ranking places clear, 35 to 38.
GB, as all year, in 13th place. Avg. rank falls from 204 to 206 - Ed Corries 9 place fall from 234 to 243 drives that; minor movements elsewhere were equally up and down throughout, largely cancelling each other out.

WTA
GB are the story! Improving their ranking again to a new high for the year. We move from 14th to 13th.
Amanda & Katie Boulter make 6 & 10 place gain respectively; but really, this change is due to Belgian losses ahead of us.
The Belgian #7 spot goes from WR260 to WR326, as Ysaline Bonaventure tumbles 66 places, and there is no one to pick up the slack.
Our avg. rank therefore improves only from 212 to 211. Belgiums meanwhile goes from 205 to 213.
Switzerland now ahead of us are on avg rank 196 though, so hard to see another move soon, especially as Bencic has lot's of easy ground to improve into.
When all ranked players from all countries are considered, GB actually fall away from the median.

JonH · All-time great

Thanks ABB!

ATP - thought France might start pegging Spain back, shame to be honest!

WTA - good stuff from GB and interesting how GB men and ladies are now effectively neck and neck as well, 13th in both lists and pretty close on ranking averages.

JonH · All-time great

Looking at next 5 weeks, Dan, Aljaz and Ed Corrie all appear to have a fair few points to potentially come off compared to those around them, obviously they may win points but others may as well, so we could see GB lose a few points average rankings wise on the mens side, even if we dont drop any places.

Ed Corrie looks to be hitting a particularly important period ranking points wise.

AliBlahBlah · All-time great

Updated: https://public.tableau.com/views/20170306ATPWTACountryStrengths/ATPCountryRankings?:embed=y&:display_count=yes

ATP
No change in the top 18 nations.
GB Avg. Ranking returns to its year high of 204 from 206.
That helped by the GB 7 position improving from WR275 to WR254 as a result of Brydan's exploits; which offset other minor falls elsewhere.

WTA
For the second week running GB are the story. This week for all the wrong reasons.
Big falls from Heather and Naomi see us suffer the largest single week fall by any nation in the top 40 so far this year.
We drop 3 places to 16th.
Recent efforts by Barty for Australia & Svitolina/Tsurenko for Ukraine push both those actively past us, and Belgiums lack of anything dreadful squeezes them ahead, too.
GB Avg. Ranking falls to a new low for the year from 211 to 218. It's not just others excelling that drove our crash, we provided nothing in mitigation.
Effectively, no one in our top 10 is playing well (with Johanna inactive), successes by Ms. Lumsden & Ms. Swan, come too low down to help out.

JonH · All-time great

Thanks ABB!

ATP - I see gap between Spain and France is actually widening at the very top, I had hoped at season start that France would start to close but obviously not to be

WTA - wow, that is dramatic, looking at it closely, Australia seem to be moving around as dramatically as we are, back and forth across the ytd. In the top ten, I see Japan have taken over from France and Slovakia move into the top ten ahead of Italy, is that a general sign that the Italian ladies are starting to retire and are just not as strong as in the hey day of Pennetta, Schiavone, Errani, Vince a couple of years ago...

AliBlahBlah · All-time great

This quick chart tries to more clearly illustrate why GB fell on the WTA.

Obviously, all driven by Johanna's inexcusable loss of one place.