Roger Federer, barely managed to save his #1 ranking in his match against Ginepri today. Ginepri, was up a set and a break serving for the match at 6-5 but he choked the game away and then lost the tie break. Federer, then proceeded to demolish Ginepri in the third set 6-0.
Had Federer lost the match today he would have lost his #1 ranking because the South African Airways Ranking system ranks players based on how far they are able to get into various tournaments. For example, if a player makes it to the quarter finals of Hamburg and then loses in the second round of that tournament the next year that player will lose all of the points that they accumulated between the quarter finals and the second round and would fall down in the rankings. Federer, was the champion last year in Cincinnati and would have sacrificed all 500 of his points had he lost today. Nadal, however lost in his opening match last year so his difference (had he lost in his first match) would have been the same. There is only 300 points that separates Federer from Nadal at this point so Federer would have lost his ranking regardless of how Nadal did in Cincinnati. It's a little confusing but the important thing for Federer is that he doesn't have to give up his reign yet.
Federer, has had too many sub par performances this year and if he doesn't start playing well he will continue to drop until he's out of the top ten. It seems hard to imagine a top ten without him but his last two matches haven't been top 10 level quality. I don't know where it goes from here for him but if he doesn't gain some confidence soon he won't have that #1 ranking for more than two weeks.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment