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Brian Swartz · 07-13-2015, 10:15 PM

Anil Mehul -- 20th to 17th singles, 295th to 383rd doubles. After an 18-5 start to the year, 11-6 during the clay/grass season was not fantastic. Winning the tough second-rounders at the French and Wimbledon kept it from being a disastrous stretch and he did continue to move up a bit, but no question he's happy to be done with it and back to the hard courts.

Girish Girsh -- 207th to 168th singles, 490th to 435th doubles. Similarly, Girsh moved up slowly as well with qualifying at Wimbledon the unquestioned highlight. He'll continue to claw his way up the challenger ranks, inch by inch.

Prakash Mooljee -- 1028th to 626th juniors. Among the better of the tier-5 competitors, he should make the jump to tier-4 in the third quarter.

Manager Ranking -- 25th to 22nd, 10.8k to 11.6k points. Continuing to gradually climb the ladder.

As for Chittoor, he's up to 54th but has also reached the point where he has been significantly overplayed to the point where it is really starting to adversely affect his performance. Assuming this mismanagement continues, at some point this will cause his ranking to fall but as of right now he's in no danger of being kicked out of the WTC roster.

This seemed a good time to show the ranking breakdown for each player as part of a more detailed explanation of how the system works and the kinds of decisions that can come up. The report in the screenshots here are only available to VIPs but with a bit of time could be hammered out fairly easily from a player's tournament history. The basic concept to keep in mind is that tennis operates on a rolling 52-week system, meaning the rankings are based on all points earned over the past year, and also that points are awarded based on what round you reach. So starting from the bottom up to begin with simplicity, here is Prakash Mooljee.

Most of this is fairly self-explanatory. The column on the left, 'W.L.', stands for 'Weeks Left'. In other words, how long it will be until a result is no longer counted. Naturally this starts at 52 and ends when a full year has passed. Although it isn't stated here, six events each year only count for the junior rankings. Mooljee has gone through the stage of establishing a ranking: at the bottom, one of his results for singles and doubles are listed as 'non-countable' since he's over the six-event limit. Those are disregarded. The best six singles results, and one-quarter of the best-six doubles results, are added together to give his ranking points. 80 + 14 for a total of 94 in this case. At this stage he has to get past the first round in singles(for a JG5) or past the quarterfinals in doubles in order to add to his points total: otherwhise he's just replacing an identical result and his points won't change.

Anil Manohar

On the pro tour, the number of countable results increase from six to what is known as the 'best 18' for singles: 14 for doubles. For most players, like Manohar here, it's simply a matter of adding up all the results from the previous year. Lower-ranking players usually do not play more than 18 tournaments, because practice is more important -- for younger players, developing to become the best they can at peak, and for younger players, working on their skills to become a better trainer since they are no longer good enough to compete at the top anyway.

Girish Girsh

Girsh is pretty much the same, except that we can see Wimbledon is separated out at the top. All Slams and Masters are counted first, and then other events added in up to the 18-result limit. He's starting to reach the point where good futures results will be dropped off, i.e. his win in China in a couple weeks time, and this will slow his rise as will the fact that his tournament schedule will be slowing again now that he's in position to have solid practice partners. He'll probably only be playing one challenger between now and the US Open in a couple months.

Anil Mehul

This, of course, is a lot different. There are a lot more categories, and it looks a lot more complicated, but really isn't overly so. The decisions on what tournaments to play based on this can be however. Every player who finished in the Top 30 the previous year gets a result for all of the Slams and the eight(excluding Monte Carlo) mandatory Masters -- if they don't play, they simply receive 0 points and are additionally banned from one Masters event the following year. So it's basically a really bad idea for a top player not to enter all of them, since they are going to count anyway.

That makes 12 tournaments: the other six are made up of as many as 4 500s and the rest 250s or challengers if the player was low enough to qualify. Anybody in the Top 32 at the time of entry cannot play a challenger event.

The upshot of all of this is that at the elite level, the only way to move up significantly is to do better in the Slams/Masters: there are a lot more points available there than in the smaller events. Mehul has a couple of 'extras' at the bottom: the UNICEF result will probably replace that last challenger in Sopot when it drops off in a couple of weeks. WTC success has been a nice boon, and even more-so earlier in his career: there was a point, when pushing through the lower ranks, when it was 200 of less than 500 points, or nearly half of his total. Continuing the trend towards slightly better and more consistent results this year will help, but the 'wall' that has seemingly been erected against Mehul at the Round of 16 will need to be consistently breached if he is to threaten the Top 10.

At this point his goal is to get securely into the Top 16(for better seeding) as soon as possible, and after that climb as close to the Top 10 as possible by the end of the year. For reference, here's how the spots around him look:

14. Oliver Challenger(29, USA) -- 2495
15. Giorgio Becerril(29, ARG) -- 2455
16. Isaac Malpica(29, ESP) -- 2050
17. Anil Mehul(23, SRL) -- 1905
18. Gael Graff(31, ARG) -- 1885
19. Strahinja Kecic(27, CRO) -- 1880
20. Julian Hammerstein(23, AUT) -- 1840
21. Lubos Nedved(26, CZE) -- 1695

It's very competitive and fluid, and over the last couple months Mehul has moved up more due to players like Kecic and Graff sliding than anything great that he's done. There are four masters left in the year(three hardcourt, one indoor) and getting seeded there will be a major boon in him getting consistently solid or better results. Right now though, he's the first man out which would mean he could face any of the top players in an early round. He'll need to play either Atlanta(250) or Washington(500) and probably both ahead of the Canada Masters a month from now. The uncertainty in whether he'll be in or out of the seeded positions at that time makes planning the tournament schedule a guessing game at best. The situation will be shifting on a weekly basis. In the long view, the upcoming schedule is absolutely vital: those two events followed by Canada/Cincinatti Masters back-to-back, then a week off followed by the US Open, and the week after that the WTC QF tie against Austria. It's a lot to pack in less than two months, which is one reason why he's had a little more rest over the spring and summer. Much will be determined in the coming weeks.

07-13-2015, 10:15 PM	#63
Brian Swartz Grizzled Veteran Join Date: May 2006	Anil Mehul -- 20th to 17th singles, 295th to 383rd doubles. After an 18-5 start to the year, 11-6 during the clay/grass season was not fantastic. Winning the tough second-rounders at the French and Wimbledon kept it from being a disastrous stretch and he did continue to move up a bit, but no question he's happy to be done with it and back to the hard courts. Girish Girsh -- 207th to 168th singles, 490th to 435th doubles. Similarly, Girsh moved up slowly as well with qualifying at Wimbledon the unquestioned highlight. He'll continue to claw his way up the challenger ranks, inch by inch. Prakash Mooljee -- 1028th to 626th juniors. Among the better of the tier-5 competitors, he should make the jump to tier-4 in the third quarter. Manager Ranking -- 25th to 22nd, 10.8k to 11.6k points. Continuing to gradually climb the ladder. As for Chittoor, he's up to 54th but has also reached the point where he has been significantly overplayed to the point where it is really starting to adversely affect his performance. Assuming this mismanagement continues, at some point this will cause his ranking to fall but as of right now he's in no danger of being kicked out of the WTC roster. This seemed a good time to show the ranking breakdown for each player as part of a more detailed explanation of how the system works and the kinds of decisions that can come up. The report in the screenshots here are only available to VIPs but with a bit of time could be hammered out fairly easily from a player's tournament history. The basic concept to keep in mind is that tennis operates on a rolling 52-week system, meaning the rankings are based on all points earned over the past year, and also that points are awarded based on what round you reach. So starting from the bottom up to begin with simplicity, here is Prakash Mooljee. Most of this is fairly self-explanatory. The column on the left, 'W.L.', stands for 'Weeks Left'. In other words, how long it will be until a result is no longer counted. Naturally this starts at 52 and ends when a full year has passed. Although it isn't stated here, six events each year only count for the junior rankings. Mooljee has gone through the stage of establishing a ranking: at the bottom, one of his results for singles and doubles are listed as 'non-countable' since he's over the six-event limit. Those are disregarded. The best six singles results, and one-quarter of the best-six doubles results, are added together to give his ranking points. 80 + 14 for a total of 94 in this case. At this stage he has to get past the first round in singles(for a JG5) or past the quarterfinals in doubles in order to add to his points total: otherwhise he's just replacing an identical result and his points won't change. Anil Manohar On the pro tour, the number of countable results increase from six to what is known as the 'best 18' for singles: 14 for doubles. For most players, like Manohar here, it's simply a matter of adding up all the results from the previous year. Lower-ranking players usually do not play more than 18 tournaments, because practice is more important -- for younger players, developing to become the best they can at peak, and for younger players, working on their skills to become a better trainer since they are no longer good enough to compete at the top anyway. Girish Girsh Girsh is pretty much the same, except that we can see Wimbledon is separated out at the top. All Slams and Masters are counted first, and then other events added in up to the 18-result limit. He's starting to reach the point where good futures results will be dropped off, i.e. his win in China in a couple weeks time, and this will slow his rise as will the fact that his tournament schedule will be slowing again now that he's in position to have solid practice partners. He'll probably only be playing one challenger between now and the US Open in a couple months. Anil Mehul This, of course, is a lot different. There are a lot more categories, and it looks a lot more complicated, but really isn't overly so. The decisions on what tournaments to play based on this can be however. Every player who finished in the Top 30 the previous year gets a result for all of the Slams and the eight(excluding Monte Carlo) mandatory Masters -- if they don't play, they simply receive 0 points and are additionally banned from one Masters event the following year. So it's basically a really bad idea for a top player not to enter all of them, since they are going to count anyway. That makes 12 tournaments: the other six are made up of as many as 4 500s and the rest 250s or challengers if the player was low enough to qualify. Anybody in the Top 32 at the time of entry cannot play a challenger event. The upshot of all of this is that at the elite level, the only way to move up significantly is to do better in the Slams/Masters: there are a lot more points available there than in the smaller events. Mehul has a couple of 'extras' at the bottom: the UNICEF result will probably replace that last challenger in Sopot when it drops off in a couple of weeks. WTC success has been a nice boon, and even more-so earlier in his career: there was a point, when pushing through the lower ranks, when it was 200 of less than 500 points, or nearly half of his total. Continuing the trend towards slightly better and more consistent results this year will help, but the 'wall' that has seemingly been erected against Mehul at the Round of 16 will need to be consistently breached if he is to threaten the Top 10. At this point his goal is to get securely into the Top 16(for better seeding) as soon as possible, and after that climb as close to the Top 10 as possible by the end of the year. For reference, here's how the spots around him look: 14. Oliver Challenger(29, USA) -- 2495 15. Giorgio Becerril(29, ARG) -- 2455 16. Isaac Malpica(29, ESP) -- 2050 17. Anil Mehul(23, SRL) -- 1905 18. Gael Graff(31, ARG) -- 1885 19. Strahinja Kecic(27, CRO) -- 1880 20. Julian Hammerstein(23, AUT) -- 1840 21. Lubos Nedved(26, CZE) -- 1695 It's very competitive and fluid, and over the last couple months Mehul has moved up more due to players like Kecic and Graff sliding than anything great that he's done. There are four masters left in the year(three hardcourt, one indoor) and getting seeded there will be a major boon in him getting consistently solid or better results. Right now though, he's the first man out which would mean he could face any of the top players in an early round. He'll need to play either Atlanta(250) or Washington(500) and probably both ahead of the Canada Masters a month from now. The uncertainty in whether he'll be in or out of the seeded positions at that time makes planning the tournament schedule a guessing game at best. The situation will be shifting on a weekly basis. In the long view, the upcoming schedule is absolutely vital: those two events followed by Canada/Cincinatti Masters back-to-back, then a week off followed by the US Open, and the week after that the WTC QF tie against Austria. It's a lot to pack in less than two months, which is one reason why he's had a little more rest over the spring and summer. Much will be determined in the coming weeks.