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Ranking Points Atp + G + (75%×G) G G ATP: All Best

Mathematics plays a key role in tennis, from tournament structures and seeding to calculating player rankings and projectile motion. Player rankings are calculated weekly based on points awarded for tournament results over the past year, with more points given for advancing further in tournaments. For seeding tournaments, the top 32 players are usually seeded based on these world rankings, though Wimbledon also factors in recent grass court performance. Tournaments are structured as single-elimination brackets to determine a winner from 128 entries with 127 total matches, and seeds are arranged to avoid top players facing each other in early rounds.

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Indrani Goswami
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56 views3 pages

Ranking Points Atp + G + (75%×G) G G ATP: All Best

Mathematics plays a key role in tennis, from tournament structures and seeding to calculating player rankings and projectile motion. Player rankings are calculated weekly based on points awarded for tournament results over the past year, with more points given for advancing further in tournaments. For seeding tournaments, the top 32 players are usually seeded based on these world rankings, though Wimbledon also factors in recent grass court performance. Tournaments are structured as single-elimination brackets to determine a winner from 128 entries with 127 total matches, and seeds are arranged to avoid top players facing each other in early rounds.

Uploaded by

Indrani Goswami
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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One would think that mathematics and Tennis have no relation at all, but upon getting into

the details of the sport, there is a lot of mathematics involved. Ranging from the structure of
the tournament to the calculations involving the winning probability and projectile motion of
the sport, math plays a huge part in it.
Before every tournament begins, there has to be a schedule of fixtures which are pre-decided
and structured involving the statistics of players. To make the designing of fixtures in a
systematic way, it has to start by laying the foundation for the first round of the tournament.
The participants of the tournament must first be seeded. Looking at this, it is pretty obvious
that seeding can be done on the basis of World Rankings. But there is a systematic approach
to determine the rankings.

WORLD RANKINGS
The Association of Tennis for Men and Women both calculate and update the rankings for
the Tennis players every week. The awarding of points to each player is done separately for
doubles and singles. The rank is then decided in the descending manner of points. For the
ranking of double teams, total rank points between the two players are considered together.
Ranking for each player is calculated by considering the player’s best tournament results over
the last year with the condition of having at least one Grand Slam in it. The points are
awarded on the basis of the type of tournament and which round did the player reach. It is an
example of exponential growth as the points double for every extra round a player qualifies.
For winning the championship 2000 points are awarded, for getting knocked out in the semi-
final 780 points.

SEEDING A TOURNAMENT
Seeding a tournament involves listing of the top 32 participants using the World rankings as
calculated above. Three of the four Grand Slams except Wimbledon follow this rule for
seeding. The formula for seeding at Wimbledon is as follows:

Ranking points = ATP + Gall + (75%×Gbest)


1. Gall :: Total points earned in the past 12 months in grass court tournaments alone.
2. Gbest :: Number of points awarded for player’s best performance at grass court
tournaments in the 12 months before.
3. ATP :: Total ATP points of the player before the tournament.
STRUCTURING A TOURNAMENT
Two important things are considered while structuring a tournament. First, the number of
matches should be reasonable as there are 128 entries in a single tournament. Unlike football
this cannot have every player play each other (8128 matches) , so this sport decides to
conduct single elimination tournament which would lead to 127 matches in total. The simple
math involved here is that one player has to lose at least one match to be eliminated. So,
whatever the approach is, for 128 players, there has to be 127 matches because 127 players
have to be eliminated to decide the winner.

Single-elimination tournament

The second important thing for structuring a


tournament is that the makers of the fixtures should arrange it in such a way that no top seed
players clash with each other in the early stages of the tournament. The idea is to not make
the top 2 seeds to play before finals, top 4 before the semi-finals, top 8 before the quarter-
finals and likewise.
Here is one example of a well-structured tournament.

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