Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
I think the WTA should just change their rankings system to recognize that Serena and Venus Williams are #1 and #2 in the world until they retire, no matter how much time they may take off from the game. They frequently drop down in the rankings because they take extended periods of time off from tennis, but if they're in the tournament it's pretty much a done deal that one of them is going to win. They should just be #1 and #1A until they retire. When they're taking the game seriously, they're virtually unbeatable.
Yes, I know Venus lost, but she's had a knee injury and wasn't moving well.
Comments
I'm fine with the rankings being based on actual wins over the last year. It doesn't really matter since it's only indirectly used in seeding.
My bosses' daughter (Elizabeth Vlachkis(sp?)) plays on the tour. It's kinda the equivalent of golf's Q school, if you win enough, you get to move up in level and get pounded by the big girls. She actually made the finals of one of the tournaments and was ranked 383 or thereabouts and might have qualified for the qualifier for the US Open, or whatever the next big tourney is. Still, pretty impressive. Especially since she's 20 and is being lapped by the next batch of young uns, works full time and goes to U of Michigan.
Posted by: teammarty | September 12, 2009 1:32 PM
Did someone just hack this site? Because this post doesn't sound like it was written by Ed. Certainly the argument that the Williams sisters should be #1 and #1A (??) because they always win when they are "taking the game seriously" is way below Ed's usual standard.
The rankings system has worked very well over the years -- 14 out of the top 16 men's seeds made it to the 4th round in the US Open this year and one of the two who didn't make it was hurt. And it was not long ago when people used to moan bitterly that there were never any upsets in the women's game as the top seeds always made it to the latter stages of a tournament.
The Williams sisters are an anomaly, sure. But it's their choice to focus only on the majors -- it's not the fault of the ranking system. It's not the job of the WTA to find a way to accommodate the whims of players who lose interest in playing in smaller tournaments. Majors already count for double the ranking points than the next level of tournaments.
Obviously the Williams sisters don't care, and they accept the consequences -- the main one being there's a 50/50 chance they will drawn in the same half of a major. In any case, Venus is hardly a lock as number 2 (or 1A). She's never won the Australian Open or the French, and she's lost plenty of big matches even when she's not been hobbled by injury.
In the end, for the top tennis players, the measure of greatness is the number of majors you win in your career. So when it's all done and dusted, it doesn't really matter what their day-to-day rankings were during their careers.
Posted by: tacitus | September 12, 2009 2:17 PM
"I know Venus lost, but she's had a knee injury and wasn't moving well"
Curious how often Venus' injuries flare up when she's in a tough match.
Posted by: Screechy Monkey | September 12, 2009 3:31 PM
Also curious how they both seem to scream more on important points. It's almost as though they were doing it to distract their opponent... (Though to be fair, almost all the women players use that 'tactic' nowadays. Here's to hoping they'll make some rule about it soon.)
Posted by: Ketil Tveiten | September 12, 2009 4:32 PM
Also, no true Scotsman plays tennis.
Posted by: MPL | September 12, 2009 9:44 PM
And what is Serena's excuse (for losing to Kim Clisters in the semi-final)?
Okay, the ending was terrible, with Serena down 4-6, 4-5, serving at 15-30 and then called for a foot-fault/double-fault for 15-40 and a (second) code violation for match point. But, contrary to how John McEnroe called it, it was a foot-fault because I just looked up the rules and your foot is not allowed to touch the baseline before you hit the ball, which Serena's left foot did, as I saw the replay. (McEnroe is a great commentator, but has a tendency to side with players over linespersons, for some reason.) Serena did show some class by going over to shake Kim's hand after the tournament referee made the call.
Even with her facing two match-points at 15-40, I would have been nervous if I had bet against her. I'm not giving her back the point for the foot-fault on second serve, though. It was a great match, and I (and everyone else) would have liked to see it play out.
Posted by: JimV | September 12, 2009 11:50 PM
Players foot fault all the time, but they rarely get called on it. Unless it's a really really obvious foot fault, most linespeople let the occasional foot fault slide. To call a foot fault on the game's biggest star in a Grand Slam semifinal match, on a second serve at two points from possible match point for the opponent is...certainly within the rules, but highly questionable in practice.
I'm not a big Serena Williams fan at all, but I respect her abilities enormously and I think she kinda got hosed. I'm just not a big fan of needlessly defaulting players out of major matches just because of an occasional on-court temper tantrum.
Posted by: ezwriter | September 13, 2009 5:03 AM
Just wondering...
She said she would shove that tennis ball... er, ....
where?
Posted by: marc buhler | September 13, 2009 5:40 AM
"The Williams sisters are an anomaly, sure. But it's their choice to focus only on the majors -- it's not the fault of the ranking system. It's not the job of the WTA to find a way to accommodate the whims of players who lose interest in playing in smaller tournaments. Majors already count for double the ranking points than the next level of tournaments."
Personally, I think the bigger problem for women's tennis is the fact that Serena and Venus can do as well as they do while seemingly not taking the tour seriously. They shouldn't be able to play the limited schedule they do and still do as well as they do at the majors. In my opinion, this points to the weakness of the field: when Safina, Ivanovic, Jankovic, Dementieva, et al can't buy a second serve under pressure, there is something seriously wrong with the women's game.
Just as Serena and Venus shouldn't be able to do as well as they do, Kim Cjlisters shouldn't be able to make the finals of the US Open after 2 years off and three warm-up tournaments. The fact that she outplayed Serena in the semi is a great testament to her skill and competitiveness, but just underscores the sorry state of the women's game.
Posted by: dogscratcher | September 13, 2009 10:33 AM
I didn't know Ed was a tennis fan.
Well, I didn't used to be a Williams fan. When they first came on the scene, they were both really cocky. Whenever they lost, no credit would be given to their opponent. It would be all about them, they didn't play well. On the other hand, for two or three years, Serena Williams was one the most dominant female tennis players of all time. Her only competition at all during her run was her sister.
But, since their dominance has faded somewhat, they've become more likable. I don't see being them cocky now. And their not like some athletes with fragile egos, where if things aren't going well, they wilt. Both sisters are some of the fiercest competitors, men or women, in any sport. How many times has Serena or Venus come from back from down a break in the third, or match point down, to win. They never give up, and the higher the pressure, the better they seem to play, which you gotta respect.
Posted by: MyPetSlug | September 13, 2009 10:37 AM
"I'm just not a big fan of needlessly defaulting players out of major matches just because of an occasional on-court temper tantrum."
I don't think the officials should be giving code violations for things like racket abuse (it's my racket, what do you care what I do with it?), but that ship sailed a long time ago, presumably on "what will the children think" grounds.
But that's all beside the point. If that had happened on the first point of the match, Serena should have been immediately defaulted.
I can't think of any sport where a player could gesture threateningly as an official and declare "I'm going to fucking shove this fucking ball down your fucking throat" and not get ejected immediately.
I'm not sure if the linespeople get paid or not; my recollection is that they are volunteers (unlike the umpires). The chair umpire and tournament referee have to protect their linespeople from that kind of abuse.
Posted by: Screechy Monkey | September 13, 2009 2:48 PM
JimV: It wasn't a foot fault. Replays showed that. Her foot was in the air, it only touched the baseline after she hit the ball. Unless the rule stated that your foot must be squarely on the ground, it was a dubious foot fault call. I think players should be allowed to challenge foot fault calls. I don't trust those linespersons a bit. Look at that Federer-Djokovic match, the number of time the linespersons were wrong was staggering at this level!
Posted by: Julie | September 13, 2009 11:11 PM
Julie:
It looked like a foot fault to me. I also understand that the Tennis Channel has clear footage that shows the fault. (I haven't seen that footage, so I can vouch for it...)
But even if it was a bad call, that's part of sports. The fact is that Serena got her butt kicked and was really outplayed, and has only herself to blame for the penalty point. It ultimately doesn't matter, except to the extent it demonstrated Williams' lack of character, because Clijsters was clearly the better player. While not a mathematical certainty, there was no reasonable possibility of Clijsters not beating Williams, regardless of the foot fault or the pentalty point.
Posted by: Woody Tanaka | September 14, 2009 9:04 AM
Julie: you may be right, but that's not how I saw it. In the replay I saw, her foot was down, on the baseline, before her racquet hit the ball. Her weight was swinging forward to apply force to the ball, and that is what put her front foot, which had been raised, down. Her racquet was about to hit, about two inches from the ball. As I saw it.
I got roped into being an umpire at a softball game once. Never again. All I did was call the the balls and strikes as I saw them, and the pitcher had a fit after every ball call. Maybe it was me, but one batter turned to the catcher and asked him, what the heck is wrong with him (referring to the pitcher), and the catcher replied, "I don't know."
If they don't want the foot-fault lines-person to make calls as she sees them, they shouldn't have one. She had the best view, and would be watching the foot while listening for the sound of the racquet impact.
Posted by: JimV | September 14, 2009 9:05 AM
JimV: "In the replay I saw, her foot was down, on the baseline, before her racquet hit the ball."
In tennis, the rule is that your foot can't touch the line (or inside the line) before you make contact with the ball, or it is a foot-fault.
Posted by: dogscratcher | September 14, 2009 10:30 AM
Dogscratcher: I know. That's why I looked up the rule online after John McEnroe (at the time) said he couldn't see a foot-fault - I thought maybe I had the rule wrong, and you were allowed to touch the baseline once you had started your swing, or something. That not being the case, I then went on record here as saying it was a foot-fault, as I (and the line judge) saw it.
Which doesn't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.
Posted by: JimV | September 14, 2009 10:47 AM