Ruben Ramirez-Hidalgo: Understands the rankings better than anyone

One of the complaints about tennis over the years is that the ranking system is too tough to understand.

I have to agree.

I’m not talking about say, the arbitray cut-off that bounds even injured members of the previous season’s top 30 to mandatory tournaments. 

I’m not talking about how the same players can’t rise through the rankings after injury because they’re lumbered with a load of zero pointers for an entire season as a result (read Juan Martin Del Potro).

I’m not talking about the ability of wily pros to play the system and achieve top 75 rankings without beating a single top 100 player over the course of a season (read Ruben Ramirez-Hidalgo)

No, no, no.

A quick google search for “ATP rankings (space)” reveals that the average googler doesn’t even grasp the basics.

Check out the google fail:

Yes, your eyes doen’t deceive you. “ATP rankings women” is the top result with “ATP rankings women 2010″ in fourth place. Impressive.

Apparently the average Google user with a passing interest in tennis has failed to grasp the basic fact that the ATP as the union and governing body of men’s tennis, ranks men only.

It’s a smiliar scenario when you search for “WTA rankings (space)”

At least in this one the “correct” suggestion is the first result.

But it all goes to show that if the tennis authorities are aiming to create ranking systems that are easy for the average sports fan to understand, it seems their problems are way bigger than they thought.

Or maybe it doesn’t. All this is based on the assumption that Google accurately gathers search info to predict the intended search outcome.

Google says:

“Our algorithms use a wide range of information to predict the queries users are most likely to want to see. For example, Google Suggest uses data about the overall popularity of various searches to help rank the refinements it offers.”

The queries that people are likely to want to see?

Fuck your algorithms Google, fuck your algorithms.