SuperT wrote:

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I think it's significant that Bertens and Svitolina who are currently ranked 9 and 10 in the Race, are both playing Zhengzhou this week, presumably with the aim of boosting their ranking. At the moment they are both registered for Guangzhou and Wuhan too. Meanwhile Jo is sitting out the next three weeks, suggesting she either isn't bothered or doesn't believe she can qualify? Am I being unfair?

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Yeah, Bertens has the most work to do out of anyone because her lowest counter (away from PMs and P5s where it gets slightly more complicated) is currently 180, so she will effectively need to get to the Zhengzhou final to add to her tally, as 185 points for reaching the semi final isn't going to improve her standings much, whereas Svitolina currently has 1, 1, 1 which she can easily replace with a win in any event she plays from now until the end of the season. Bertens is actually palying in Osaka the week after which is a premier so bigger points on offer than the Guangzhou international, but a much stronger field.

There was a lot of discussion on here about Konta not playing Wuhan as all the other top 46, bar Serena are playing it. Naomi Osaka originally wasn't, but she has since been given a WC. Jo mentioned at her USO Svitolina post match press conference that she wasn't sure if she was playing Wuhan or Beijing next, so reading between the lines, I'd imagine she'd also be after a WC if it was available. Easy to say now, but she really should have signed up and then withdrew nearer the time if she didn't want to play, just to keep her options open - I'd expect a fair few of the 43 of the top 46 would have done just that, and one or two may withdraw nearer the time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxqP63uJFJg

That's the press conference. From 8:00 she mentions Wuhan and Beijing, and from 9:25 she discusses the Shenzhen finals.

JonH comes home wrote:

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Looking at the points table on wiki and not knowing exactly how the scoring system works, jo does look too far away to stand a chance to be fair. In the past 6 years, 8th place has ended up between 3200 and 4000 or so points and right now, 8th , 9th and 10th are all in the range. I just cant see jo piling on the points to qualify, and of course the other players will presumably add to their tally. The top 8 minus serena and one of svitolina or kiki seems likely.

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You post 16 results over the season - you need to post the 4 slams and 4 PMs (IW, Miami, Madrid, Beijing), so that's at least 8 of them, if you miss/skip one of those for whatever reason, it counts against you and you have to include a '0' like Andreescu has at Wimbledon and Madrid. You then need to post at least 2 results from the 5 P5s (Middle East, Rome, Canada, Cincy, Wuhan), and then 6 results from elsewhere, which can also include the 3 other P5's, if they were your best scoring tournament.

So Bertens for example hasn't been past the 3rd round at any slam this year, and bar Madrid which she won, her other 2 mandatory events (IW and Miami) were pretty modest, so she is at a disadvantage - those results all need to be posted, and can't be replaced by anything she does for the rest of the season. So she does really need to do well particularly at Beijing (which has to go on her record), and it would also help if she went further than the L16 at Wuhan, so that can replace the 105 points she has at Canada, which is currently her 2nd best P5.

Jo has obviously had a great grand slam season, but it's the other big events that will likely cost her, and she currently has 1 point from Cincy as one of her 2 P5s on her tally, so replacing that with Wuhan would have been ideal, but at the moment, it doesn't look like she will be playing that. She basically needs either 1000 for winning Beijing (ideally) or 650 for losing in the final to have any chance - if she doesn't do that then there's no real hope. The entry lists for the 2 weeks of events after Beijing have been delayed due to the HK-China situation, but there's still HK (for now)/Tianjin/Linz internationals one week, and then Luxembourg intl and Moscow premier the week after, so she'd probably have to (enter and) win Moscow if she didn't win Beijing. Not playing Osaka and Wuhan looks to have put paid to her hopes. Caroline Garcia did add 1900 for winning both Wuhan and Beijing in 2017 (to come from nowhere and actually pip Jo), and Wang Qiang added 740 points for back to back semi finals in those events last year, so players have recently put big tournaments together at this stage, so you can't totally rule out an outsider gatecrashing the party (even if not Jo), but you would certainly expect them all to be from the current top 10 at this stage.

Edit - 1000 for winning Beijing not 1300, and if she 'only' gets to the final (which would still be great), she'd really need to win one of the events the following week, as well as Moscow, so realistically, if Beijing is her next event (and there's no last minute wildcards), she really does need to win Beijing.

Ace Ventura wrote:

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JonH comes home wrote:

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Looking at the points table on wiki and not knowing exactly how the scoring system works, jo does look too far away to stand a chance to be fair. In the past 6 years, 8th place has ended up between 3200 and 4000 or so points and right now, 8th , 9th and 10th are all in the range. I just cant see jo piling on the points to qualify, and of course the other players will presumably add to their tally. The top 8 minus serena and one of svitolina or kiki seems likely.

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You post 16 results over the season - you need to post the 4 slams and 4 PMs (IW, Miami, Madrid, Beijing), so that's at least 8 of them, if you miss/skip one of those for whatever reason, it counts against you and you have to include a '0' like Andreescu has at Wimbledon and Madrid. You then need to post at least 2 results from the 5 P5s (Middle East, Rome, Canada, Cincy, Wuhan), and then 6 results from elsewhere, which can also include the 3 other P5's, if they were your best scoring tournament.

So Bertens for example hasn't been past the 3rd round at any slam this year, and bar Madrid which she won, her other 2 mandatory events (IW and Miami) were pretty modest, so she is at a disadvantage - those results all need to be posted, and can't be replaced by anything she does for the rest of the season. So she does really need to do well particularly at Beijing (which has to go on her record), and it would also help if she went further than the L16 at Wuhan, so that can replace the 105 points she has at Canada, which is currently her 2nd best P5.

Jo has obviously had a great grand slam season, but it's the other big events that will likely cost her, and she currently has 1 point from Cincy as one of her 2 P5s on her tally, so replacing that with Wuhan would have been ideal, but at the moment, it doesn't look like she will be playing that. She basically needs either 1000 for winning Beijing (ideally) or 650 for losing in the final to have any chance - if she doesn't do that then there's no real hope. The entry lists for the 2 weeks of events after Beijing have been delayed due to the HK-China situation, but there's still HK (for now)/Tianjin/Linz internationals one week, and then Luxembourg intl and Moscow premier the week after, so she'd probably have to (enter and) win Moscow if she didn't win Beijing. Not playing Osaka and Wuhan looks to have put paid to her hopes. Caroline Garcia did add 1900 for winning both Wuhan and Beijing in 2017 (to come from nowhere and actually pip Jo), and Wang Qiang added 740 points for back to back semi finals in those events last year, so players have recently put big tournaments together at this stage, so you can't totally rule out an outsider gatecrashing the party (even if not Jo), but you would certainly expect them all to be from the current top 10 at this stage.

 

Edit - 1000 for winning Beijing not 1300, and if she 'only' gets to the final (which would still be great), she'd really need to win one of the events the following week, as well as Moscow, so realistically, if Beijing is her next event (and there's no last minute wildcards), she really does need to win Beijing.

-- Edited by Ace Ventura on Tuesday 10th of September 2019 01:21:03 PM

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 WTA and ATP have always had an uneasy time with how to make the end of the Race interesting to folks, punters. Reading above, the scoring system automatically screams complexity and that isnt good. I understand why they do it, but a race is much easier to sell if it is a straightforward totting up , a la F1 or somesuch. I can just about live with a 16 tournie scoring limit, although I would rather it was limitless, but I do think every event you play should count and not have some constant on/off process at different tournie levels. 

Being honest, my ideal "Race" would be to just count the 4 Slams, 4 PM's and 5 P5's and make that it. The players qualifying would then be the ones who perform best in the biggest events. Ditto the mens with the 4 Slams and 9 Masters events.   

Ace Ventura wrote:

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JonH comes home wrote:

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Looking at the points table on wiki and not knowing exactly how the scoring system works, jo does look too far away to stand a chance to be fair. In the past 6 years, 8th place has ended up between 3200 and 4000 or so points and right now, 8th , 9th and 10th are all in the range. I just cant see jo piling on the points to qualify, and of course the other players will presumably add to their tally. The top 8 minus serena and one of svitolina or kiki seems likely.

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You post 16 results over the season - you need to post the 4 slams and 4 PMs (IW, Miami, Madrid, Beijing), so that's at least 8 of them, if you miss/skip one of those for whatever reason, it counts against you and you have to include a '0' like Andreescu has at Wimbledon and Madrid. You then need to post at least 2 results from the 5 P5s (Middle East, Rome, Canada, Cincy, Wuhan), and then 6 results from elsewhere, which can also include the 3 other P5's, if they were your best scoring tournament.

So Bertens for example hasn't been past the 3rd round at any slam this year, and bar Madrid which she won, her other 2 mandatory events (IW and Miami) were pretty modest, so she is at a disadvantage - those results all need to be posted, and can't be replaced by anything she does for the rest of the season. So she does really need to do well particularly at Beijing (which has to go on her record), and it would also help if she went further than the L16 at Wuhan, so that can replace the 105 points she has at Canada, which is currently her 2nd best P5.

Jo has obviously had a great grand slam season, but it's the other big events that will likely cost her, and she currently has 1 point from Cincy as one of her 2 P5s on her tally, so replacing that with Wuhan would have been ideal, but at the moment, it doesn't look like she will be playing that. She basically needs either 1000 for winning Beijing (ideally) or 650 for losing in the final to have any chance - if she doesn't do that then there's no real hope. The entry lists for the 2 weeks of events after Beijing have been delayed due to the HK-China situation, but there's still HK (for now)/Tianjin/Linz internationals one week, and then Luxembourg intl and Moscow premier the week after, so she'd probably have to (enter and) win Moscow if she didn't win Beijing. Not playing Osaka and Wuhan looks to have put paid to her hopes. Caroline Garcia did add 1900 for winning both Wuhan and Beijing in 2017 (to come from nowhere and actually pip Jo), and Wang Qiang added 740 points for back to back semi finals in those events last year, so players have recently put big tournaments together at this stage, so you can't totally rule out an outsider gatecrashing the party (even if not Jo), but you would certainly expect them all to be from the current top 10 at this stage.

 

Edit - 1000 for winning Beijing not 1300, and if she 'only' gets to the final (which would still be great), she'd really need to win one of the events the following week, as well as Moscow, so realistically, if Beijing is her next event (and there's no last minute wildcards), she really does need to win Beijing.

-- Edited by Ace Ventura on Tuesday 10th of September 2019 01:39:50 PM

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 Thanks so much for this thorough explanation. A couple of simplistic questions.

If you are a player ranked around 300 you are unlikely to make any of these tournaments you list so you can only count 6 tournaments? Or am I being a bit dim?

Is there any reason you just can't count any tournament you play?

indiana wrote:

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I must admit that I've missed this "uneasy time".

The WTA and ATP races usually do come down to the final weeks with a number of contendors for the last one or two places - ie in the Beijing Mandatory and the following couple of weeks for the women and in the Paris Masters for the men. In 2017 the ATP race had Jack Sock come from well behind a load of other contendors to qualify with his Paris Masters title and AV has mentioned big late moves among the women. 

You could tinker with the rules for counters ( essentially the same as the overall rankings and so the two lists converge prior to the finals ) but you can't get away from the fact that in a season long race most of the finalists will secure their places fairly well in advance. And that's fair enough to me, they've earned their places.

Radically, I guess you could double the points for the Beijing Mandatory ( and Paris Masters ) to more put the cat among the pigeons. Though the similar idea in Formula One ( double final race points ) was not that well received in that season long championship and dropped after one year.

-- Edited by indiana on Tuesday 10th of September 2019 07:03:03 PM

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Yes, the sport that does do this is golf with the FedEx cup in the US, where points are ratcheted up at the end of the season. But I don't particularly like that since you can win the whole thing with a couple of good results at the end.. Their aim is to ensure that there is always more than one candidate that can win the thing during the last tournament. Tennis doesn't need to do this since all 8 finalists can win the ATP/ WTA finals, and I must admit I don't like the extra gimmicry which goes with trying to make the last few tournaments more competitive for the year end race/ title 

the addict wrote:

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For players outside the top 20, you can count any 16 tournaments, but must include any of the slams or premier mandatories you take part in.

But of course, to get into the year-end events, you have to be ranked inside the top twenty so you have to include the other events as Ace has explained.

If you look at the points breakdown for a few players on openerarankings.com/WTAHome you'll see exactly what is counted for different players

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Strictly I believe the top 20 commmitment in one season applies to the top 20 from the previous season so a non top 20 player from 2018 like Bianca Andreescu can play the WTA finals as a top 8 player this year without having a top 20 commitment eg. she has just played one Premier 5 this season ( the Toronto title ) with no issue like compulsory zeros for not competing in any more Premier 5s. Similarly the top 20 commitment doesn't apply to Jo Konta this year. 

Re Slams and Premier Mandatories all players count any MDs they play in or could thoretically have played in based on entry rankings. Again, looking at Bianca ( an interesting case study ) she thus has compulsory zeros for her missed Madrid and Wimbledon since her rankings were good enough for MD but not for her missed Miami since her entry ranking for there ( taken prior to her Indian Wells title as a qualifier ) was not good enough for MD.