So a few of you have noticed in the comments that my "coverage" of tennis is weighed towards the ladies. Guilty as charged. There are a few conscious reasons for this:
- I think the guys get all the focus anyway. There are so many tennis sites and news sites that cover men's tennis exclusively. It's not hard to find all that information.
- The guys are boring off-court. There's nothing fun or interesting to write about.
- The guys are boring on-court. I mean, come on, what would you rather read about? JJ's latest on-court antics or yet another Crazy Elf win (don't answer that, gauloises).
- I know more about the WTA than the ATP.
But I do try to provide balanced coverage so imagine me smacking my forehead after I wrote that long post about the ladies' YEC and then realized I would probably have to do the same for the boys. The problem is, and this is confession time, I have NO IDEA how the guys do their rankings. I know the concepts are the same, but in terms of how points break out between mandatory and non-mandatory events, the increased number of tournaments on the men side, etc., I've been too lazy to actually sit down and go through the ATP rule book to figure it out. I hereby make a vow to you, my unjustifiably loyal Forty Deuce audience, that I will do my homework during the off-season and head into 2009 as an encyclopedia of rankings knowledge.
But until then I'm going to cheat and rely on Tennis.com's awesome Shanghai tracker:
So right now, A-Rod, Daveed, and Crazy Train are holding the remaning spots. But Commodus, Blah Blah, and Stan have a good shot. All the bubble guys are in action this week (though Simon is thinking of withdrawing from Lyon) and the guys they're chasing are in action too, except for Daveed. Stan has already lost so he will stay at 301 pts, I believe.
Regardless of how this week shakes out, next week's Paris Masters tournament will be exciting, as the last Shanghai spots will still be up for grabs.
