British Tennis Forum - Celebrating 20 Years!

JonH comes home wrote:

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2025 Player of the Season Qualifiers List: Alicia joins the party!

1) Andy Lapthorne - Australian Open Wheelchair Quad Doubles, Quad Wheelchair Singles #1

2) Alfie Hewett and Gordon Reid - Australian Open and French Open Wheelchair Mens Doubles

3) Alfie Hewett - Australian Open Wheelchair Mens Singles, Jan PoM RU

4) Henry Patten - Australian Open Mens Doubles, Jan PoM

5) Oliver Bonding - Feb PoM

6) Fran Jones - Feb PoM RU, July PoM, Aug PoM RU

7) Jack Draper - Mar PoM, Men's singles #1

8) Liv Nicholls - Mar PoM RU, Jun PoM; Women's Doubles #1

9) Sonay Kartal - Apr PoM, Sept PoM

10) Megan Knight - Apr PoM RU

11) Jay Clarke - May PoM

12) Anna McBride - May PoM RU

13) Oli Tarvet - Jun PoM

14) Julian Cash/Lloyd Glasspool - Wimbledon Mens Doubles Champions, July PoM RU, August PoM

15) Emma Raducanu - Women's singles #1

16) Hannah Klugman - Junior girl's #1

17) Lucy Shuker - Womens Wheelchair Singles #1

18) Alicia Dudeney - Sept PoM RU

19) Mika Stojsavljevic - Oct PoM

20) Emily Webley-Smith - Oct PoM RU

Two new qualifiers take us to 20. 11 women and 9 men in the list; several juniors as well. And one over 40!

 

Current qualifiers list - of these, Henry, Julian/Lloyd and Alicia are in the November PoM vote currently; Jay is in action today and may get into November PoM. The other PoM contenders arent into PoS yet. 

As per above we have 22 PoS qualifiers so far. December PoM may add one or two and the wildcard vote will take us to 28 qualifiers.

The way it will work is the 28 will be split into 4 groups of 7. From each group, the top 3 plus any ties will go to the semis. No play off votes in round one.

The 12 (plus ties) will be split into 2 semifinal groups of 6 (or more if there were ties).

From the semis, 2 (plus any ties) will proceed to a final. Again, no play off voting.

The final will then comprise the top 4 (plus any ties). If the final has a tie at the end, there WILL be a play off vote to determine the overall Player of the season.

In terms of the round one groups - they are organised to provide a balance to each group:

I want to avoid these groups being unbalanced and so players have been organised into men/women, singles/doubles, juniors, wheelchair/para tennis. Where possible, players from each of these groups will be evenly spread across the 4 round one groups. This way, for example, we avoid all the wheelchair players being in one group or all the doubles players, or a group with 7 women and another with none. 

Many people tend to vote with a prior "bias" to one or another and this avoids, where we can, people having to choose between all of their favourites being in the same group at the start.

At this point, we have 12 women/girls qualified, as an example - each group would have 4 women in it. We have 4 doubles players/pairs qualified (2 mens, 1 womens, 1 wheelchair). Each group will have 1 of these in it (allowing for the fact that the womens doubles player is also in the womens allocation, ditto the other players appear in more than one allocation group). Similarly, the wheelchair players total 4 and there is going to be one in each group.

It is very much like the FIFA World Cup draw, but it is actually quite easy and works well and we have always ended up with well balanced groups - and the draft groups this year look to be v well balanced again.

But - there will certainly be some that see their favourites clashing - that is life, so don't complain! And it would be the same with a completely random allocation as well and probably less well balanced. With 3 players and ties progressing, anyone deserving of the PoS title will survive and progress. The past few years, we have had a final grouping of 4 or more that most people would concur are a well deserving bunch, with very few major raising of the eyebrows. Although, we have had surprises, for sure, and it has been v tight in some voting - not least last seasons final, which went all the way!