According to my ranking algorithm, Serena Williams is best player headed into the 2011 US Open. \u00a0It isn’t even close. Keep in mind that my system is focused specifically on who can beat whom on hard courts, not on a nebulous sense of the “best, most consistent player.” Serena may not be likely to show up at any given tournament, but when she does, she wins.<\/p>\n
Thanks to a solid grass-court season and her win in Montreal, Serena is well ahead of the pack. \u00a0Kim Clijsters still has a lock on the #2 spot, but she won’t be in New York. \u00a0Wozniacki, Azarenka, and Sharapova are very tightly packed in the next three spots, in that order.<\/p>\n
Despite playing even less than her sister has, Venus Williams comes in at #14. \u00a0Fans of American tennis will find some promise here–my system favors Melanie Oudin (58), Vania King (75), and Sloane Stephens (81), while all are currently outside the WTA top 100.<\/p>\n
Here is the full list. \u00a0Check back later this weekend for tournament predictions based on these rankings and the full draw.<\/p>\n
RANK PLAYER PTS \n1 Serena Williams 8504 \n2 Kim Clijsters 6683 \n3 Caroline Wozniacki 6307 \n4 Victoria Azarenka 6178 \n5 Maria Sharapova 6158 \n6 Petra Kvitova 5846 \n7 Vera Zvonareva 5698 \n8 Samantha Stosur 4547 \n9 Na Li 4528 \n10 Agnieszka Radwanska 4379 \n11 Marion Bartoli 4152 \n12 Andrea Petkovic 3862 \n13 Dominika Cibulkova 3704 \n14 Venus Williams 3589 \n15 Sabine Lisicki 3409 \n16 Shuai Peng 2978 \n17 Ana Ivanovic 2918 \n18 Daniela Hantuchova 2887 \n19 Svetlana Kuznetsova 2841 \n20 Jelena Jankovic 2737 \n\nRANK PLAYER PTS \n21 Alisa Kleybanova 2500 \n22 Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova 2494 \n23 Flavia Pennetta 2475 \n24 Roberta Vinci 2253 \n25 Yanina Wickmayer 2246 \n26 Maria Jose Martinez Sanchez 2212 \n27 Nadia Petrova 2209 \n28 Francesca Schiavone 2139 \n29 Shahar Peer 2097 \n30 Jie Zheng 2084 \n31 Julia Goerges 1812 \n32 Lucie Safarova 1746 \n33 Galina Voskoboeva 1735 \n34 Kaia Kanepi 1731 \n35 Ekaterina Makarova 1727 \n36 Maria Kirilenko 1718 \n37 Tsvetana Pironkova 1597 \n38 Elena Vesnina 1387 \n39 Kateryna Bondarenko 1364 \n40 Christina McHale 1318 \n\nRANK PLAYER PTS \n41 Petra Cetkovska 1295 \n42 Gisela Dulko 1279 \n43 Iveta Benesova 1234 \n44 Tamira Paszek 1227 \n45 Klara Zakopalova 1195 \n46 Dinara Safina 1189 \n47 Bethanie Mattek-Sands 1146 \n48 Aravane Rezai 1133 \n49 Virginie Razzano 1111 \n50 Anastasija Sevastova 1098 \n51 Jarmila Gajdosova 1092 \n52 Sara Errani 1076 \n53 Vera Dushevina 1063 \n54 Petra Martic 1052 \n55 Alona Bondarenko 983 \n56 Marina Erakovic 965 \n57 Bojana Jovanovski 964 \n58 Melanie Oudin 947 \n59 Anna Chakvetadze 928 \n60 Magdalena Rybarikova 901 \n\nRANK PLAYER PTS \n61 Alize Cornet 891 \n62 Simona Halep 885 \n63 Timea Bacsinszky 863 \n64 Polona Hercog 823 \n65 Greta Arn 823 \n66 Aleksandra Wozniak 816 \n67 Ksenia Pervak 810 \n68 Romina Oprandi 800 \n69 Kimiko Date-Krumm 780 \n70 Alexandra Dulgheru 772 \n71 Jelena Dokic 767 \n72 Elena Baltacha 754 \n73 Barbora Zahlavova Strycova 753 \n74 Agnes Szavay 751 \n75 Vania King 709 \n76 Ayumi Morita 708 \n77 Angelique Kerber 707 \n78 Johanna Larsson 702 \n79 Melinda Czink 700 \n80 Sofia Arvidsson 685 \n\nRANK PLAYER PTS \n81 Sloane Stephens 659 \n82 Anabel Medina Garrigues 650 \n83 Kirsten Flipkens 637 \n84 Monica Niculescu 623 \n85 Carla Suarez Navarro 618 \n86 Alla Kudryavtseva 618 \n87 Lucie Hradecka 607 \n88 Yaroslava Shvedova 599 \n89 Kristina Barrois 591 \n90 Regina Kulikova 590 \n91 Anastasia Rodionova 580 \n92 Sorana Cirstea 577 \n93 Vesna Dolonts 576 \n94 Eleni Daniilidou 563 \n95 Urszula Radwanska 557 \n96 Olga Govortsova 534 \n97 Arantxa Rus 523 \n98 Anastasiya Yakimova 522 \n99 Shuai Zhang 517 \n100 Kai-Chen Chang 512<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"According to my ranking algorithm, Serena Williams is best player headed into the 2011 US Open. \u00a0It isn’t even close. Keep in mind that my system is focused specifically on who can beat whom on hard courts, not on a nebulous sense of the “best, most consistent player.” Serena may not be likely to show … Continue reading WTA Hard Court Rankings, pre-US Open<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[91,118,127],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rankings","category-u-s-open","category-wta"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}