The first $80K of the year (In yellow) is only as competitive as some $60K, and less competitive than still others, and even one $25K!

I don't think GS considerations have much weight for strengths in $25K except as a potential long term indicator that ambitious or talented players might choose to prioritise development on Hard as most big events to which they would later aspire are on that service. In reality, this hasn't been ever been true though, Clay countries like clay; we don't etc.
I think the Clay averages will firm up a bit as we ove into the clay season proper, and most players, even those that don't especially like the surfrace will be giving it their yearly best effort to try and maximise their returns; same fro grass later.

For Hard to be well inside the upper quartile in both seeds and non seeds when the surface has held as many events as all other surfaces combined YTD is pretty remarkable.
Somewhere there must be a formula for the UK to provide for this demand, there must be a way to make it financially profitable: provide the regular $25K destination on hard courts in the way that Sharm/Antalya/Heraklion/Hammamet have managed to do week in week out. One every two weeks, or rather, in blocks so players can stay for multiple weeks and genereate multiple hospitlity revenues etc.
Not in terms of benefitting GB tennis exactly, but well enough run, by a proactive and well minded authority, that money could be reinvested in to $15K for GB development We could be a leader.... sorry what am I thinking...

Last 5 weeks in a row, and 9 out of the last 10 weeks, have seen us with a wins-to-entries ratio beter than 1.000
Only 3 weeks this year that we've dipped below, and 2 of those were in the weeks of GB events - the other one that fell short was just the one match shy of being even.
We have fewer players taking part, both in the total amount of unique players competing, and the number of total events that our active players are playing (even on a per player basis) but thos ethat do play are doing a lot, lot better than last year by this point, and the pre clay season was the general best part of 2017 in this regard.
Our better players are the ones playing, so this is hopefully what we'd expect, or at least hope. That doesn't necessarily follow, as our very best players are all having a bit of a mare this year. It is though perhaps a premature view of the future: few players to follow, but realistic expectations of relative success from those that do play.
Do we just want the Premiership & Championship, and no regard for the Conference? Mileage will vary. We'll see what 2019 does bring, later.

Updates start of week 17:

GB still with a clear winning record - this is the part of the year where in 2017 we started to fall away consistently to the end of the year, eventually ending with a losing record. Can we maintain the form in 2018?

When Katie Swan's $25K SF points go on, next wee, that should firm up GB#9 as she moves up, and better rankings take the lower places in the reshuffle; we'll be back to lamenting GB#10 in no time.

The days of 30+ GB women look numbered, perhaps forever with the new tour changes.
We continue to outperform last year, and this is another week where without winning any matches we are still guaranteed to maintain that advantage. Will clay season proper impact that, or consider how poor 2017 clay was for us, will we actually accelerate even farther past 2017?

Katie also won from a set down, taking her to 5 such wins - the new leader amongst Brits in 2018.

Those two Oceania 60ks really stick out as great value but I suppose it is negated for most by the relatively large investment in travel if you are based in the Americas or Europe. The LTA given its relative wealth does have an opportunity to mitigate the cost of such a trip and optimise the opportunity. One would hope to see Fran Jones out there for the first couple of months of 2019?

The Optimist wrote:

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Blob, do your lists of most matches played / won / lost etc include qualifying matches or MD only?

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MD & Q - all professional matches, at all levels.

I have fields I can drop in to the tables to break things down and/or filter things further, by any other dimension: MD/Q, Tour, Surface, Level etc

All other sites I see never include $15K/$25K qualifying in their figures - this was want I really started wanting to do, as for a large number of our players, at the lower end, that is their only matches. I never got insight into them, especially as a group, as their matches were just not usefully counted anywhere.