Strange rule

Nikolay Davydenko may not be Tour's brightest star and people tend to see him as a little boring. This just shows how misleading it can be to concentrate on one's looks and not being able to look behind the mirror.

The world No.5 is a very interesting person to talk to. He always got his own opinion and he isn't shy to tell what he thinks. Like back than, when he told, that Sydney was a tournament nobody really cared about. Now the 27 year old Russian criticized the new ATP World Tour ranking system.

The ATP World Tour calendar devides events into Grand Slams, Masters 1000's, Masters 500's and 250's. The ranking includes a players best 18 results, but the rule isn't as simpe as it may sound. The new ranking rules tell the top 50 players to play all 4 Grand Slams, 8 out of 9 Masters 1000's, 4 of 11 500's and 2 additional 250's. This is all what will count for the standings.

Davydenko, who used to support the Tour in playing many smaller events, finds this rule as a strange one.

“If I win four tournaments in the 250, only two are coming in the ranking,” he said. “If I play all 500s losing in first and second round, it’s also coming in the ranking. Now you need to make very good results in Masters Series and Grand Slams. All the other tournaments really doesn’t matter. For your ranking, for your position, you don’t care. Because if you win two tournaments in 250, then really, you don’t care. You already have made your ranking, so for what reason do I need to play this tournament? So I think it was not so good [move] by ATP.”

“You can’t only have concentration in 500-tournaments. You can win 10 tournaments in 250 and you’re still number 50 in the world. It can happen because you didn’t make so good result in the Grand Slams, the [Masters 1000 and 500s]. What about this other tournaments? What about this 250s? Because everybody will say [they don’t] care about this tournament then. Because nobody will play, if you have only two of these tournaments in the ranking.”

“Tournament directors want to have some top players coming. But then you say, ‘yeah but I need to concentrate for the 500 tournaments, I cannot come to the 250’. And then these tournaments can be very bad. Because the last time last year I played very good in the small tournaments. Now I need concentration for Rotterdam, Dubai and what’s coming in the 500s.”

It's really difficult not to agree with Kolya. If the ATP wants to help the smaller tournaments to develope, they should back them up and force the top players to come and play there. The truth is - all tournaments want to have the best possible draw, but now it will be more difficult than ever for the tournament organizers to provide for big names.
But this is how it goes - why should the ATP emphesize, if the only thing there is on its mind is to make more money...

~jachal