Oct 30, 2017

  • Peter BodoESPN.com Staff Writer

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      Peter Bodo has been roofing tennis for over 35 years, mostly recently for ESPN. He is a former WTA Writer of the Year and the writer of numerous books, including the classic "The Courts of Babylon" and the New York Times bestseller (with Pete Sampras), "A Champion's Mind."

Caroline Wozniacki won the fifth-well-nigh important championship in women's lawn tennis on Sunday, capping off a year in which she reached 10 finals (2-eight), led the tour in wins (threescore) and peak-x wins (fourteen). But she woke up Monday morning ranked No. 3 in the globe for 2017 and couldn't be blamed if she felt a little cheated.

The prized year-terminate No. 1 ranking landed in the hands of Simona Halep, who won but one tournament -- Madrid -- in 2017. It's was a large ane, but nothing like the WTA Finals. Halep had a losing record (5-6) against peak-10 players, had thirteen fewer wins overall and lost to Wozniacki both times they met.

Garbine Muguruza, ranked No. 2, won Wimbledon. But she took merely 1 other title, won thirteen fewer matches than Wozniacki, finished iv-6 confronting Meridian ten opponents and lost both times she played the consistent Dane.

These women aren't to blame for where they wound upwardly in the rankings; all they did was get out and operate within the system. The unusually competitive nature of this yr also helps explicate some of these anomalies.

Only since the inception of the computerized rankings, at that place has been a running boxing between those who think information technology they ought to emphasize consistency and those who believe they ought to emphasize operation at the biggest events and against top opponents. This twelvemonth, they seemed to emphasize neither. Do they need to be fixed?

"The emphasis should exist on the Slams," Craig Kardon told ESPN.com. Kardon has coached numerous players, including Martina Navratilova and Coco Vandeweghe. "Doing well on the tour should count also, simply look at some Slam champs and how little they play. They're the large stars and they're at a disadvantage. Simplify it, give more points for the Slams. Besides, people see them equally more than important."

Serena Williams won the Australian Open, so promptly left the game for the remainder of the year for her pregnancy and the birth of her first child. It's a special case, yet equally age and the demands of an ultrasuccessful career take their toll, the biggest stars in the game want to play less.

The WTA wants players to support the bout and take role in its branded events (the Grand Slams, while the well-nigh of import in the game, belong to the ITF). That helps explain the WTA's reluctance to requite the Grand Slams too much weight in the rankings. Brand the rankings too Slam-centric and soon more than and more than top players volition be finding means to skip smaller tour events, the lifeblood of the WTA.

Patrick Mouratoglou, Serena Williams' coach, is sympathetic to the WTA's position. Just he still thinks the tour weighs its own events too heavily.

"In 2012, when I started working with Serena later on Roland Garros, she won Wimbledon," Mouratoglou told ESPN.com in an electronic mail. "Then she won the gold medal at the Olympics, the The states Open and the yr-cease WTA Championships. At the end of the year, she was ranked No. iii."

While one Williams might have been punished for non playing plenty, this year the other Williams arguably hasn't been rewarded adequately for her consistency throughout the twelvemonth'south biggest events. Venus Williams, at the age of 37, won 23 total matches at the Big v (K Slams and WTA Finals), five more than the next best, Muguruza. Halep won barely half as many (13).

Venus ends the year ranked No. 5, despite having appeared in three of the Big 5 finals (Australian Open up, Wimbledon, WTA Finals). She didn't win a tournament, merely she only played in xvi (including the WTA Finals), while others in the Top 10 played in equally many as 25.

Venus' potent play in the large events is praiseworthy. But is it overshadowed by her loss in the Wimbledon final to Muguruza?

In a recent WTA podcast, Navratilova said that finishing the year on top was a greater accomplishment than winning a major because of the consistency required: "To be No. i, you accept to exist meliorate than everybody else; to win a Slam, y'all but have to be ameliorate than seven players."

Yet some too experience that nobody should finish No. 1 without having won a major. As Mouratoglou said, "No player should become earth No. 1 without winning a Grand Slam in the yr. If it happens, information technology is not relevant."

Halep is the seventh adult female to reach the top ranking without having won a major and the tertiary to take year-finish No. 1 honors (Jelena Jankovic in 2008 and Wozniacki in 2010 and 2011 are the others).

The most obvious way to halt this trend is to honor more points to the winner of a Grand Slam event, but it might exist even more valuable to award a college number of rankings points round-by-circular at the majors. That would have helped Venus Williams this year and hurt Halep, who failed to win a match at two of the four majors (Australian and US Opens). It seems fair, because the reward represents both consistency and success at big events. It besides would have helped Muguruza, the Wimbledon champ and year-end No. 2, who came upwards a mere thirty rankings points (what making the third round of Grand Slam qualifying is worth) shy of Halep.

Bonus points, once a staple in the ATP rankings, are another option. They would be awarded for wins over highly ranked opponents. At Wimbledon, Roger Federer recalled how he played Pat Rafter in the first round of the French Open in 1999 for double the rankings points and with 45 actress points on offering because Rafter was ranked between Nos. 2 and v. Federer, merely 17 at the time, lost.

"That bonus points thing gets a footling complicated," Kamau Murray, bus of Sloane Stephens, told ESPN.com. "There's and so much going on in a role player'due south mind. Defending points, getting back to the quarters, ranking position. It would be counterproductive to give them something else to have to calculate, like bonus points. My philosophy is, just show upwardly and win 7 in a row."

Ii of the women who were able to do that, Serena Williams (No. 21) and Stephens (No. 13), were nowhere near No. i by year's end. Another, Jelena Ostapenko, barely qualified for the WTA Finals. Muguruza finished No. 2, but she probably wouldn't swap her Wimbledon title for Halep'south year-end No. one or Wozniacki's overall record. Because at the stop of the day, the ane matter all the elevation players agree upon is that their main ambition is to win Grand Slams.

Perhaps that ought to effigy into the calculus, also.