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It's not so lonely at the top

© Michael Cecilio

The last four months at the top of the Sanex WTA tour could be described as an anomaly. During this period, the tour has seen a change in the top spot four different times. Four #1's in the period of four months - that kind of "uncanniness" has never before been seen on the WTA tour, a circuit once renowned for having only one or (at the most) two dominant players, and a few hundred other sidekicks.

However, perhaps it is not simply an anomaly, nor a quirk in the current rankings system. Sure, both "anomaly" and "quirk" can be used to describe the situation, but perhaps more effectively, the situation can be noted down to the fact that the tour is seeing a greater depth in competition at the elite level. No one player is able to gain complete domination over the tour, or over each other. And that simply makes for good tennis.

Venus Williams has been touted as the world's best player since capturing her first Grand Slam title at Wimbledon 2000. For most of the period as the "world's best player", she had not touched the #1 ranking, nor even come close. That in itself could have been considered an anomaly, but it owed itself to the fact that the rankings system rewards play over a period of 52 weeks - not simply over a half year of brilliant play and another half of inconsistency and/or non-play. Martina Hingis showed how to hold the #1 for such a sustained period of time, even without being the "world's best player" or even more subjectively without winning a Grand Slam title in three years. She did it by sustaining a high level of consistency throughout the season - consistently good but never brilliant.

However, as the Williams family had predicted before the Williams sisters - Venus and Serena - had ever turned professional on the tennis circuit, Venus has finally attained her just desserts by reaching the #1 ranking. She has done it by winning a tour leading nine tournaments in the last 52 weeks (only Lindsay Davenport comes close with five), including two of the last three Grand Slams (successful title defences at Wimbledon and the US Open). What is amazing about that statistic is that those nine tournaments have been won out of a possible fifteen, having only lost five times in the past year (and never to the same person twice).

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