Serena Williams, Maria Sharapova, Victoria Azarenka - Who is World no.1 (2012) ? - Part 1

A lot of debate has been going on lately as to whether the WTA ranking system is working fine or not, with Serena Williams winning Wimbledon and U.S Open, Olympic gold medal, and the year-end championships, but still finishing the year at 3rd place behind the Australian Open winner and Olympic bronze medalist and Roland Garros winner and Olympic Silver medalist, Azarenka and Sharapova respectively.

Few questions everyone has been asking are:

Should Williams be ranked ahead of Azarenka and Sharapova?

Is Azarenka the legitimate world no. 1?

Should the ranking system be changed?

I did not intend to go into detailed analysis of this issue, since I have been very busy lately with my internship and my approaching exams in December, but I just could not stop myself from jotting down this article today ;)

Let us first look at what the ranking system says:

“The WTA rankings are based on a 52-week, cumulative system. A player's ranking is determined by her results at a maximum of 16 tournaments for singles.”

Interestingly, the ranking points of none of the 3 players come from 16 tournaments. Azarenka's ranking points come from 15 tournaments, while Sharapova's and Serena's come from 13 tournaments each.

“The tournaments that count towards a player's ranking are those that yield the highest ranking points during the rolling 52-week period. They must include points from:

-          -  Grand Slams (each player played the 4 grand slams)

-    - Premier Mandatory tournaments (Azarenka and Sharapova played all the 4 premiere mandatory  tournaments, Serena on the other hand skipped two of them, and played in only 2 tournaments)

-        - WTA Championships (Serena went undefeated, Sharapova’s only defeat came at the hands of Serena, while Azarenka’s 2 looses came at the hands of Serena and Sharapova)”

“For Top 20 players, their best two results at Premier 5 tournaments will also count”  (Azarenka played 4 Premiere 5, whereas Serena and Sharapova played 2 each)

I have summarized the year of 3 players in a few key measures; I hope you people will agree with them:

Description	Azarenka	Sharapova	Williams
Tournaments played	17	14	13
Tournaments counted for ranking	15	13	13
Win - Loss	69-10	60-11	58-4
Record against Top 10 players	19-8	14-9	18-2
Average Rank of player who defeated her	9.6	7.7	45
Titles Won	6	3	7
Runner - Up Showings	3	6	0

Serena excels in 2 categories (highlighted in yellow), record against top 10 and the titles won. The only category where she does not excel is the average rank of the player who defeated her, thanks to Razzano's upset at Roland Garros.

The above summary clearly indicates that Serena should have ended the year at top. However, things are not as simple as they look. 

Let us break the above summary into two parts, first half of the year (From the beginning of the year till Roland Garros), and second half of the year (starting from Wimbledon the end of the year). We will be looking at the first half of the year today, and the second half of the year tomorrow.

SUMMARY FOR FIRST HALF OF THE YEAR

Description	Azarenka	Sharapova	Williams
Tournaments played	9	8	7
Tournaments counted for ranking	8	7	7
Win - Loss	38-4	37-5	29-3
Record against Top 10 players	12-3	8-4	5-1
Average Rank of player who defeated her	8.5	8.8	57.6
Titles Won	4	3	2
Runner - Up Showings	2	3	0

The above summary clearly indicates that Azarenka and Sharapova were way better than Williams in the first half of the year.

It is interesting to note that Sharapova made it to the quarter-finals of all the events she played in the first half of the year. What is more interesting  is that all her loses came at the hands of eventual champions.

Azarenka and Williams made it to the quarter-finals of all the events they entered into, with the exception of two tournaments for each player. For Azarenka it was at Rome, where had had to withdraw from her 3rd round meeting against Cibulkova due to injury, and French Open where she lost in the 4th round to Cibulkova. Williams on the other hand fell to Makrova in the 4th round of Australian Open and in the first round of Roland Garros at the hands of Razzano. It was Williams first ever loss in the first round of a Grand Slam.

Note that Serena did not make it to the quarter-finals of the two grand slams played during the first half of the year, whereas Azarenka won the Australian Open (d. Sharapova), while Sahrapova was runner-up at Australian Open (lost to Azarenka), and winner at Roland Garros (d. Errani).

Let us have a look at the breakup of the first half of each player, the tournaments each played, and the players each lost to and how far did each player make it in the tournaments she entered.

The rows highlighted in red show the tournaments the player did not play, while the yellow highlighted ones show the tournaments played by all three of them.

(Sorry for the abnormal size of the picture, I just could not paste it properly either as a table or as a picture, it was not legible if I reduced its size)

Remarkably of the 5 events where each of the 3 players played, Azarenka and Williams won one tournament each, Australian Open and Madrid respectively, while Sharapova won two tournaments, Rome and Roland Garros. However, Williams defeated both Sharapova and Azarenka in her title run to Madrid (Sharpova in QF and Azarenka in F), Sharapova and Azarenka did not have to face Williams during their title runs, since Williams lost early in Australian Open and Roland Garros, while withdrew from her semi-final match in Rome.

This is it for today; we will look into the second half of the year tomorrow, with a summary for the whole year at the end of it. I hope you people enjoyed it, stay tuned for the second part. Don’t forget to let me know how do you people see it!