[StevenG]

 Zelandakh, on 2017-May-09, 02:50, said:

Another way of doing it would be to use Elo ratings and adjust the K factor to be very high for grand slams. That would result in much higher accuracy but would have the downside, from the Tours' perspectives, of removing much of the incentive to play more often.

The primary purpose of the ranking system is to make players play as much as possible. Ranking points get you seeded, and they get you into the main draw rather than qualification (and I assume they get you into qualification rather than the ITF circuit). Creating some sort of plausible rating is essential, otherwise the rankings would be regarded with derision, but that's certainly not what they are for.

[Zelandakh]

 gwnn, on 2017-May-09, 03:59, said:

Elo ratings with some kind of penalty for inactivity, right? In chess, the only penalty for inactivity is an "i" next to the rating that can be taken away once you play even one rated game. Could be a fun math problem, how to do it. Maybe add a 'tournament' where you draw 9 1600's at the end of every year. Not sure.

The ELO system that is used for German table tennis ratings has a penalty for inactivity built in. It kicks in after a year and there are further penalties every 6 months thereafter. It would not be difficult to implement a similar method for tennis. The trick is of course to balance inflation and deflation as much as possible. The DTTV achieve this by giving out free bonus points to junior players; the ATP and WTF would presumably need to find an alternative, possibly just a straight points bonus for winning grand slam matches in addition to the higher K factor. Elo ratings are basically flexible enough to be adapted to most circumstances so I am confident that would work if the tennis authorities decided they wanted a ratings system with a more solid mathematical basis. My guess is that they are well aware of this but feel the need to encourage their top stars onto the circuit a few extra times a year is more important.

[billw55]

ELO rates each individual match separately. The existing ranking system awards points for placement in an event, which is not the same thing. So that bring up two questions: do we want to deprioritize actually winning events, and do we want to consider quality of opponent(s)?

For example, player A might go 5-1 at Wimbledon, defeating a few top players on the way to losing in the semifinal. Meanwhile player B might get a couple walkovers and a fortunate draw to win the event at 5-0, playing no top-10 players. ELO might well give player A better result for the event. Is that something we want to happen?

[gwnn]

ELO = Electronic Light Orchestra. Elo = a rating system named after a Hungarian-American dude (Élő, which funnily means "alive").

gwnn = obnoxious.

[WellSpyder]

 gwnn, on 2017-May-09, 10:06, said:

ELO = Electronic Light Orchestra.

Darned computers seem to be taking over everything! In my day it was Electric Light Orchestra.....

[gwnn]

haha serves me right!

[cherdano]

Bump

[y66]

Nice comeback Jordan Speith.

[billw55]

 y66, on 2017-July-23, 12:36, said:

Nice comeback Jordan Speith.

That's what all the stories are saying, but I am not sure "comeback" is the right word. He teed off with a 3 shot lead, lost it, then finished strong to end with ... a 3 shot lead. And he never trailed by more than 1 stroke. I would just say he won.

[y66]

Point taken. Comeback is relative in this case (relative to Augusta 2016) and refers to Speith digging in after blowing a 3 stroke lead and pushing his drive 120 yards right into unplayable rough on 13 after which he calmly focused on the task at hand, found a way to get out of there with an incredible bogey 5 and then turned it up a notch over the last 5 holes.

[gwnn]

bump

[PhantomSac]

 gwnn, on 2018-February-19, 10:49, said:

bump

Sick bump...what a legend!

[y66]

Roger Federer as Religious Experience by David Foster Wallace (2006)