WTA Means More Play

by Victoria Weiss Burns

Every season, it seems, the WTA offers up its obligatory Big Issue. Last year it was the threat of a WTA no-show at the Australian Open (unsatisfactory pay scale, dontcha know.) A '95 brouhaha was brought on by the Seles co-ranking affair (unsatisfactory vote at '93 Rome, dontcha know.) In '94 it was the Great Age Limit Dialectic. (Listing everything unsatisfactory about that one would be a full-time job.)

Now, 1997 brings us the New Ranking System Scandal. At least, it's trying hard to reach scandal status, without much success. Many among the fans who don't deal well with change started condemning the new system before a point had even been played, complete with falling-sky forecasts for the future of WTA tennis.

The argument has it that dumping the point averaging method might encourage players to drastically increase the number of events they put on their schedules. It follows, then, that the WTA will soon be rife with injuries, gutted tournament draws, ruined careers, and other assorted types of gloom.

Hmmm. Let's take a look at that. The first 19 weeks of the season should be good enough for an informal study. If any real change is happening, it ought to be happening by then. So, what I've done is look at every event, and every player who played in them, from the beginning of the year through the finish of Rome, for 1996 and 1997.

Now, without having put this to a test of statistical significance or any such, it looks clear enough to me just at glance the 'increased play' prediction is seeing reality in a big way.

Here are some quick observations that caught my interest:

1. In 1996, there were no players -- absolutely none -- who had a double-digit number of events on record for this time period. In 1997, there are 13.
2. Of those 13 players, 12 have increased their number of events by at least 3 over last year. (Farina jumped up by only 1.)
3. In 1996, the greatest number of events played by any player was 9. There were 4 players who had played 9. In 1997, there are 14. The number who played 8 has gone up from 8 to 13 players.
4. The number of players entering 3, 4, 5, 6, or 7 events during this part of the season has decreased dramatically.
5. All the to-do about how much Hingis is playing seems unjustified, since she's played fewer this year than last. (Where was the big stink about her schedule in '96?)

Here are some of the questions I asked myself, by way of looking at possible non-ranking system reasons for this change:

1. Has prize money on the tour gone up enough to incite this much increase in activity? The answer is "No". Prize money for WTA events doesn't appear to have gone up at all (except for the Indian Wells event).
2. Were there more events on the schedule this year? Answer: "Not really". In 1996 there were 19 events from start through Rome. In 1997 there were 20. This is accounted for by the addition of Gold Coast. I _don't_ think it accounts for what we're seeing here.
3. Were the draws that much larger, so more opportunity this year for people to get in?
• Answer#1 is "Not overall, no". Actually, there were 816 draw slots available in 1996, and 868 in 1997. This is accounted for by: Gold Coast draw-30; Hilton Head returned to a draw-56 after a hugely unpopular move to draw-28; Linz, Oklahoma, and Japan Open went down from draw-32 to that weird draw-30 thingy.
• Answer#2: I don't think larger draws would matter much since a lot of the change appears to be among people who had no trouble making the main draw anyhow.

In summary, I'm convinced. Something's going on. Does it make for a problem? Well...in truth, the injury list is looking pretty sparse.

There's Graf's knee ailment -- arising from anything but too much play of late. Add Seles' aching shoulder -- carrying over from more than a year ago, and more likely the result of too little play. Hingis also has a knee issue -- born of too much horseback riding (or possibly not enough). And there are assorted absent players lost to pre-ranking system injury -- McGrath and Halard-Decugis, just to name a couple. In short, it takes some effort to define all this vigorous activity as a problem.