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ATP simplies rankings system

The Association of Tennis Professionals, governing body of the sport, has decided to scrap the current, highly complicated tennis rankings are to be scrapped.

In its place, comes a simple 12-month race for the world championship.

The new system, which will kick off in the year 2000, is mainly designed to force the top players to take part in all Grand Slam and Super 9 tournaments -- failure to do so causing an immediate drop in the rankings, besides the very real possibility of missing out on a shot at the year end title.

The proposed points race will replace the present system, which counts results of the last 52 weeks.

Revealing details, ATP Tour CEO Mark Miles said, "Beginning each January, a player's ranking will simply comprise the total number of points he wins from the four Slams, the Super 9s, and his next five best results, totally 18 tournaments in all."

To ensure that the system works, it will further be made mandatory for the top players to enter all the Super 9s -- in fact, high ranked players will be automatically entered into the tournaments.

If the new proposal were in place now, Pete Sampras would be number 12 in the world this week, accurately reflecting his slump in the first six months of 1998.

The men's top seed at Wimbledon was among the first to come out in support of the proposed change. Arguing that it made the rankings easier to follows, Sampras said, ``To have a yearly race, and whoever has the most points at the end of the year is No. 1, I think that's the simplest way for everyone to understand it. Also, getting the top players to commit for the Super 9s is good for the game.''

The tour's nine top-tier events will remain unchanged. Top players will be required to play in all top-tier tournaments as well as the Grand Slams, and those events will weigh more heavily in the rankings.

While the finer details are yet to be worked out, the ATP has also provided for those players who are not ranked high enough to get into the Super 9s and the Slams. Thus, for players unable to play the 18 top tournaments, ranking will be based on their 18 best performances of the year.

The ATP further plans to discontinue up to 10 small tournaments, in order to streamline the men's calendar and create more flexibility in the schedule. The tournaments that will be axed were not disclosed, as yet.

Other changes proposed include taking the year-end championship away from Hanover, where it is now held on a regular basis, and giving it to top global centres on a rotation basis.

This, however, did not meet with Sampras's approval. "The crowds at Hanover are terrific," he said. "Besides, some continuity is good for tennis -- for instance, the Slams are held at the same venue every year. I don't know how good rotation of the year-ending championship event will be for the game."

Meanwhile, Boris Becker's much-hyped initiative, in tandem with a Swiss company, to create an alternative for the men's tour has been flatly rejected.

Becker, along with marketing company Prisma, sought to create a circuit that would replace the men's ATP Tour. Becker in fact fronted for Prisma at a clandestine meeting with the chairmen of the four Slams, in a bid to sign them up, but was turned down flat.

The bid by Prisma somewhat parallels the initiative by Kerry Packer in the seventies, to tie up cricket with television coverage.

To stymie the bid, the ATP in its turn announced a four-year marketing agreement with Swiss marketing company ISL and London-based sports marketing firm Octagon.

The deals are not as lucrative as the proposal put forward by Prisma, but they are still expected to increase revenue for men's tennis by about 30 percent.

The reason why Prisma failed to capture the interest of the Grand Slam bosses, sources indicate, was at least in part because the company proposed pay-per-view telecasts. This, tournament officials believe, would drastically reduce exposure, which for the Grand Slams is global today.

Agencies