While watching the fantastic Wimbledon final on Sunday I noticed that the announcers kept mentioning the possibility of Nadal taking over the number 1 ranking this year, which would of course be huge considering Federer has been #1 for about 180 weeks in a row. Now I do think Nadal will eventually reach #1, considering he's about 4 or 5 years younger than Federer and also way ahead of the rest of the field (although keep an eye on Djokovic).
(As a side note for our less tennis inclined readers, the rankings consist of the points earned for tournaments within the past 52 weeks. All 4 grand slams and all 9 masters events count even if you did not participate. Then your best 5 international series results are added as well. More prestigous tournaments earn more points.)
So what would it take for Nadal to end the year at #1?
The total ranking points as of today are Fed 7290, Nadal 5225. If we take only the 2007 points earned, Nadal is ahead !!!! 4430 - 4005. The clay court season has obviously helped and there are probably no more clay events that Nadal will play this year. I doubt either will play again before the Toronto Masters in August. The remaining major events are:
Masters - Toronto
Masters - Cincinnati
US Open
Masters - Madrid
Masters - Paris
Masters Cup
The US Open is obviously worth the most points, but 500 for a win at a masters event is still a lot. Last year, neither of them played Paris (the only masters event on carpet). If Nadal improves his hard court performance from last year, I wonder if one or both of them decide to play this event to get an edge on the other. Federer has not played Paris since 2003 and Nadal has never played there. So unless the rankings have gotten very close by then, I don't envision either playing there.
Assuming that both play the other 5 events, it will likely come down to who wins the most of those 5, and with Roger's past success on the hard courts I feel he's got the edge. But if Nadal could pull out the US Open win and strong showings in the other tournaments, we could be looking at a very interesting Masters Cup to end the year.
Overall prediction, Federer takes the US Open and 2 of 3 master hard courts to keep the ranking, but Nadal will close the gap considerably and will pass him sometime during the clay court season in 2008.
2 comments:
so are points deducted if you don't play in one of the major tournaments for scoring ranks? Or do you just get a zero? you said all of the majors matter even if you don't play.
You take a 0 if you don't participate in one of the grand slams or masters events. Likewise if you don't have enough other tournaments you will just take a 0. No points are ever deducted that I know of.
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