emmsie69 wrote:

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Votesd Dan, exceeded expectations and won matches he was 2nd favourite in, had some rubbish draws overall whereas frequently jo came off 2nd best in matches you'd expect her to win.

-- Edited by emmsie69 on Thursday 17th of December 2020 03:05:28 PM

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 It happens to many WTA players as there are finer margins across the WTA top 50 than ATP. Over time Jo has had a surprising number of wins over champions: Serena, Venus, Muguruza, Halep, Kerber (when number 1), Osaka (4 wins to love), Barty, Kenin, Ostapenko, Azarenka, Clijsters ... and against other top tens.

Many of Jo's losses to lower ranked players have been hard fought or against unusually in form players on the day (eg Cirstea) and often get negatively reported. In 2020 she was rehabbing from injury up until covid and also had some tricky draws (Jabeur, Strycova) yet still achieved a semi in Mexico (with her knee taped up). In Lexington, she had that heart rate problem but followed with a semi at W&S. Over the year as a whole, she suffered from a lack of match play, yet was still the best Brit on the WTA tour and produced a better average points per tournament stat than Dan (ATP benefit from more tournaments). 

The thing about Jo, is she has the potential to challenge Andy's achievements, which makes her losses deep in slams even more disappointing but (sadly) she's not Andy. Likewise, I would be surprised if Dan ever challenges Jo's achievements. That doesn't makes Jo OR Dan a bad watch. You can expect an exciting hard fought fight from both.

And of course while rankings, titles and performances will be very big factors, so too for many will be such as expectations and progress or indeed very individual reasons why a player is that person's player of the season.

So while some may look to some sort of statistical approach, trying to equate tours in some way, others will not. 

TTMan wrote:

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emmsie69 wrote:

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TTMan wrote:

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emmsie69 wrote:

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Votesd Dan, exceeded expectations and won matches he was 2nd favourite in, had some rubbish draws overall whereas frequently jo came off 2nd best in matches you'd expect her to win.

-- Edited by emmsie69 on Thursday 17th of December 2020 03:05:28 PM

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 It happens to many WTA players as there are finer margins across the WTA top 50 than ATP. Over time Jo has had a surprising number of wins over champions: Serena, Venus, Muguruza, Halep, Kerber (when number 1), Osaka (4 wins to love), Barty, Kenin, Ostapenko, Azarenka, Clijsters ... and against other top tens.

Many of Jo's losses to lower ranked players have been hard fought or against unusually in form players on the day (eg Cirstea) and often get negatively reported. In 2020 she was rehabbing from injury up until covid and also had some tricky draws (Jabeur, Strycova) yet still achieved a semi in Mexico (with her knee taped up). In Lexington, she had that heart rate problem but followed with a semi at W&S. Over the year as a whole, she suffered from a lack of match play, yet was still the best Brit on the WTA tour and produced a better average points per tournament stat than Dan (ATP benefit from more tournaments). 

The thing about Jo, is she has the potential to challenge Andy's achievements, which makes her losses deep in slams even more disappointing but (sadly) she's not Andy. Likewise, I would be surprised if Dan ever challenges Jo's achievements. That doesn't makes Jo OR Dan a bad watch. You can expect an exciting hard fought fight from both.

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 But it's player of the season so all the issues that Jo had with her knee are relevant to this season and therefore are perfectly good reasons to discount her. As for the average points, you do know that the WTA has more points on offer in their tournaments, particularly in the 1st few rounds so thats not an equal comparision, in fact the disparity in points on offer is much larger than the actual average points total between them.  Grand Slam R16 WTA 240 points, Grand Slam R16 ATP 180 points so the WTA have 33% more points available for the same round, Jo isn't 33% more points ahead on average. 

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 In my original post I actually said:

"It's almost impossible to sensibly compare the two tours where WTA have far fewer tournaments. However, by my calculation Dan made 950 points (inc ATP Cup) and 750 on tour, that's 68 and 58 points per tournament respectively. Jo made 658 points from 9 tournaments, that's 73 points per tournament (please check my figures).

If you add 33% to Dan's 750 points on tour (to make them more "comparable" to WTA) that's c.1000 "WTA" points from 13 tournaments making Dan's average 77 points per tournament against Jo's 73. So still pretty much in same ballpark and that's WITH Jo's dodgy knee and heart rate issue.

In a different post to JonH I said:

"Comparing different tours is the same issue SPOTY has with comparing [different] sports, genders,etc  ...  for the future ... would it be feasible to have separate polls for the different tours or pick the best from each tour for the next round?"

As Indiana says, it's subjective as well as statistical. I watch all the Brits in the majors but most don't last long. Dan and Jo are equally entertaining but so far Jo has had more success. I'd accept a tie for 2020 but the voting won't go that way.

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 And then when you compare doubles, wheelchair, juniors etc it is virtually impossible to do it statistically and make it really stack up. But where Indy does make a good point is that a large part of Player of the Season (like SPOTY) is that it is emotional - which player connected with you, was there one win that stood out, did they have one event where you went "wow". Felix Gill beating Trungelliti made me go wow and he did well in PoM on the back of that, Alfie Hewett winning slams, Fran Jones in the Prague Challenger event, Joe Salisbury of course, Arthur Fery in his run over the summer, Stuart Parker and his run over the summer, all connected with me...and apologies most of those are men as I tend to follow the mens game more. 

In the past, maybe before your time TTMan, I have run favourites polls, best of all time, best of British etc etc, - scroll back in this section and go to March, April, May and you will see pages of events we ran, which Indy and Brittak helped me on. Sometimes splitting them up makes sense and sometimes mingling everyone together works - mingling is a lot more fun though!

And one thing we must never try and do is make it all about stats - otherwise that would be just about a ranking and the best player would win - but this isnt supposed to just be about the best player (if it was Anna Popescu wouldnt be here - why is she here??!) , player of the season is about a whole bunch of variables which ultimately personal to each of us. 

For me, mine swap by the round - I voted Joe and Alfie in this round, Alfie wont make the final. I may vote Joe in the final, but Dan, Fran are also on my personal radar. 

It looks like we could have 6 players in the final (4 from this group and 2 from the other) and Anna Popescu may even get on the radar if she gets through!  

Poor Anna was so close to her best result of the season , but Jo has just pulled ahead. Still time...