Rankings ...

... or wankings, as I called them yesterday.  *giggles*

If you skimmed through the tennis news you can't have failed to see the "Nadal drops to No. 7" headlines - and if you were lucky, you might have seen some reference to a wrist injury last year and an appendectomy - but mostly they were of the Nadal's-poor-start-to-the-season or Nadal-beaten-4-times-on-clay or Nadal-drops-out-of-top-4-for-the-first-time-in-10-years angle.  No reference to the fact that injury meant the loss of 2000 points for an undefended Slam win and a further 2000 points because he was unable to defend two Masters.  Or that his appendix and subsequent surgery meant he was unable to defend points at the China Open and at Shanghai or equally defend WTF final points. Or that returning from injury and surgery and with just an exho and a 500 series appearance before playing in his first Slam of the season meant that he wasn't able to hit the ground running and defend points won from the previous year's final appearance.

Rafa hasn't had the best of starts to 2015, but he didn't play too great in early 2014 either - the difference being that this time last year, Rafa still held all of his points from an unbroken 2013. Which leads me onto the subject of the Two Year Ranking system - probably the biggest straw that broke the camel's back and resulted in Rafa hastily leaving the ATP Council.

Now I'm not here to defend Rafa in any way or bear down on Smugly - who was its biggest detractor, obviously - because there's pros and cons on both sides and I'm not going to pretend I know or understand them all. But Rafa does have a point. The elite players are elite players because of the years of hard work, application and absolute talent they have. And the elite players deserve to be where they are because of the number and quality of titles they amass. Its not about "points making prizes" for them. They win Slams and they win Masters. But equally, when injury means they can't defend them, it's a big penalty for those players. And its also a huge pressure when they return from injury because if they don't win and win quickly, it makes a bad situation worse.

Of course the arguments against were that it stops new players from rising quickly. What new players I ask? Who are they? In Rafa's breakthrough year of 2005 he won 11 titles which included 1 Slam and yet it took him three years to become No. 1 in the world, in spite of beating Federer on a regular basis. People decried that under a 2 year ranking system Djokovic wouldn't have become No. 1 until 2012, despite beating Rafa in all those 2011 finals and clearly being the better player than him. No shit Sherlock, that's something we've never seen before. [sarcasm] Djokovic's breakthrough year could be seen as 2006, and yet it took him 5 years to become No. 1 and that's a under a 1 year ranking system. But as ever, Rafa was painted the bad guy whilst Roger came out of it smelling of roses because (as per some quarters) all Rafa [the permanently injured player] wanted to do was introduce something that was self serving. Hhmmm ... is it not self serving to seemingly do nothing to support initiatives to help those players who beat you in favour of supporting "the Little Guys" who don't .............. ??? 

“I’m not the only one who likes the two-year ranking. There are many other players who also do, and the two-year ranking has a clear side, which is to protect all players, not just the top ones." said Rafa at the time. There is such a thing as a protected ranking in existence now, to help those players who are coming back from injury. Nico Almagro is one such player currently as he's coming back from foot surgery ... his protected ranking has been such that he's faced Rafael Nadal in the first round of Barcelona and Novak Djokovic in the first round of Rome. That'll help him ...

As I said, I can't honestly say whether this is a good thing or not and whether Rafa is right to vehemently believe in it. But what sparked this post was seeing the name of Milos Raonic at No. 4 in the rankings. Milos Raonic ... I'd rather watch a cat scrape its claws down a blackboard. And when you see that this guy has won precisely 6 titles in his entire career with 5 of them being obscure 250 series and in 17 Grand Slam appearances, he has 2 quarter finals and 1 semi-final appearance to his name, you do have to ask yourself what the hell is going on.

I do feel that Rafa will be alright in the end though. He will be ...