Imagine This Happening at Your Workplace: Posted online and updated regularly for the whole world to see. This is an objective, black-and-white assessment of how you’ve been performing over the past 52 weeks. How do you compare to your peers and competitors and how your current position compares with the situation a day, a week, a month, a year ago.
Essentially, this is the ranking for a professional tennis player. Match wins are rewarded with points, which usually remain on a player’s record for 12 months, then are discarded. They are the currency of the game in many ways.
“It’s the most stressful thing about our job,” said Spain’s Paula Badosa, who entered Wimbledon at number three in the women’s rankings. “We spend so much time thinking about rankings: ‘If you win this match…’ or ‘If you lose against this player, you will lose your place.’ This is a lot.”
At Wimbledon, the Grand Slam tournament that ends on Sunday, there is an additional – and unprecedented – source of concern: no one is earning ranking points. This is because the WTA Women’s Tour and the ATP Men’s Tour decided not to give them out in response to the All England Club’s ban on athletes from Russia and Belarus over the war in Ukraine.
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So someone like Ons Jaboor is dealing with two sets of emotions. She is certainly excited that she has done what she has done in the past 1 1/2 weeks on the grass court, reaching her first Grand Slam semi-final and becoming the first Arab woman to reach that far. His five victories brought him closer to the trophy and made a lot of money (at least £535,000, or about $640,000).
There is also a slight drop in enthusiasm.
“I’m not going to lie to you. The more you do well, the more you regret not getting any points,” said Jabeur, 27, from Tunisia, who is ranked No. 2 and Germany’s close friend in Thursday’s semifinal. Tatjana will take on Maria (34). ,
“I don’t just look at myself, but I also look at Tatjana,” said Jaboor. “Now she makes a good run, and she doesn’t have the points.”
A player like 103rd ranked Maria loses out on the jump she got for making such a good jump a year after she missed Wimbledon because she had just given birth.
And players who did well in the event a year ago don’t get a chance to “defend” those points. The 2,000 earned by Novak Djokovic for his 2021 championship, for example, will leave his record with zero replenishment next week, even if he ends up with the title again.
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Returning to a site of success a season later can weigh on athletes who know full well that those year-old points are about to disappear.
“It’s inevitable. And if you don’t think about it, people remind you,” said 24-year-old Slovenian Tamara Zidansek, who reached the French Open semifinals in 2021, finishing 85th.
This was the main reason for his career-best number 22; She has slipped to number 60 after losing in the third round in Paris in 2022.
“It’s probably different for everyone, but I spend a lot of time thinking about the rankings,” said Taylor Fritz, the highest-ranked American at Wimbledon, number 13, who had a crucial clash in the quarter-finals on Wednesday. Will not get will usually bring. “Being in the top 10, top five is a big part of my goals.”
Djokovic already holds the men’s record for most weeks at No. 1 – he’s now No. 3 behind US Open champion Daniil Medvedev, who is Russian and banned from Wimbledon – and said he’s no longer interested in the rankings. Not worried as he once was. That could be a good thing, as the new up-to-the-minute “live rankings” that the ATP recently unveiled as part of a sponsorship deal shows it will drop to No. 7 next week.
An outspoken critic of the ban and reaction to the tours, Djokovic estimates that “more than 90 percent of players who play in this tournament, and those not playing, are going to be affected more by a zero-point situation” than he did. Will do
This is the truth. The rankings are a “benchmark”, as said by 2021 US Open semifinalist Felix Auger-Aliassim of Canada.
As he also noted, they are very high. Endorsement deals can be linked to rankings. Favorable seeding, which can make a way through a bracket easier, comes through in the rankings. Access to the main draw in the tournament is based on rankings.
“That’s the arrangement,” said Auger-Aliassime, who lost in the first round last week, “and you have to accept early in your career what it will be like.”
Another way in which rankings affect things: Going into each match, an easy way to estimate a possible outcome is to look at the numbers next to each player’s name.
Fans do this. As does the media. And players too.
The higher-rated one is the one who, on a basic and theoretical level, is “supposed” to win.
“My mind is quite dumb, sometimes, where I feel more negative than positive in every situation. So I try not to think too much about it, but at the same time, I am human. So when I rank someone higher I’m an underdog,” said Ajla Tomljanovic, an Australian ranked 44, who lost to Kazakhstan’s 23rd-ranked Elena Rybakina in the quarter-finals on Wednesday. “I can feel my nerves kicking and, especially if it’s not going my way, I can be quick to react and think, ‘Oh my god!’ And start panicking.”
Players are well aware of how easy and unhealthy it can be to become obsessed with rankings.
“I stopped looking at points and rankings because I thought it wouldn’t help me,” said Wimbledon semifinalist Denis Shapovalov last year. Look at my game and how I can improve and where I am level wise.”
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