{"id":802,"date":"2012-07-20T08:48:09","date_gmt":"2012-07-20T12:48:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/heavytopspin.com\/?p=802"},"modified":"2012-07-20T08:48:09","modified_gmt":"2012-07-20T12:48:09","slug":"why-more-players-should-have-skipped-the-olympics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/2012\/07\/20\/why-more-players-should-have-skipped-the-olympics\/","title":{"rendered":"Why More Players Should Have Skipped the Olympics"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Olympics only come every four years, and they have everything: precious metals, prestige, and national pride, along with extremely fit and horny women<\/a>.<\/p>\n

That’s good enough for most top players. \u00a018 of the top 20 men are slated to participate<\/a>, and nearly every player in the 64-man draw is ranked inside the top 100. \u00a0This is a Masters-quality field, if not a touch better.<\/p>\n

But aside from status and off-court perks, the competitors will not be rewarded accordingly. \u00a0The ATP treats the Olympic singles event as less than a Masters tournament, giving the winner 750 ranking points and the runner-up 450<\/a>. \u00a0As Ben Rothenberg has pointed out<\/a>, that means the silver medalist–probably one of the top four players in the world–will receive fewer points that week than the winner in Washington. \u00a0Only one player in top 20 (Mardy Fish<\/a>) is scheduled to compete<\/a> in the US event.<\/p>\n

More players should have made the sensible decision, skipping the Olympics in favor of Washington, perhaps adding Los Angeles or Kitzbuhel as well. \u00a0Ranking points are as cheap at those events as they are expensive in London.<\/p>\n

At a gut level, it’s unthinkable to skip the Olympics. \u00a0All those intangibles count for a lot. \u00a0If you’re a top-ten player, a few hundred extra ranking points wouldn’t make much of a difference, and an extra $50,000 in prize money barely registers. \u00a0For mid-packers, though, “intangibles” sounds like a cynical euphemism for no money and a mediocre ranking boost.<\/p>\n

Consider the case of Mardy Fish, the highest ranked player to opt for Washington over London. \u00a0Based on a simulation of possible Olympic draws (see below for details), Fish could expect to net about 80 ranking points at the Olympics. \u00a0The odds would favor him to win an opener, give him a decent shot at reaching the round of 16, and then turn against him. \u00a0Two or three matches, no prize money, not much national pride.<\/p>\n

In Washington, the story is much different. \u00a0There, Fish is the runaway favorite. \u00a0If he’s healthy (a big if<\/a>), he has at least a 1 in 5 chance of winning the tournament. \u00a0By my simulation, he can expect to gain 176 ranking points (with, of course, a decent chance of as many as 500), along with a cool $72,000.<\/p>\n

An even more instructive example is that of Donald Young<\/a>. \u00a0Young is in the midst of a horrible losing streak<\/a>, and he’ll head to London with a roughly 2 in 3 chance of heading home without a single victory. \u00a0Expected ranking points: 24.<\/p>\n

For Young, more is at stake than a few thousand dollars in prize money. \u00a0He reached the semis in Washington last year, so he is defending 180 points this week. \u00a0Losing all of those points will probably knock him out of the top 80. \u00a0There’s a big difference between a ranking in the 50s and one in the 80s: The first gets you direct entry into almost every tournament; the second leaves you in qualifying (unseeded, sometimes!) for most Masters. \u00a0Had Young elected to play Washington, he could have expected to defend at least half of his points. \u00a0That wouldn’t just earn him about $30,000 for his week’s work, it would give him a ranking that would make it enormously easier for him to earn points and prize money for the next several months.<\/p>\n

The American’s situation is unique in that he may be at a crossroads in his career. \u00a0But the same reasoning applies to every player who doesn’t feel like he has a legitimate shot at a medal. \u00a0The odds are against Radek Stepanek<\/a> reaching the second round in London–he’ll lose almost all of the 500 points he’s defending from last year’s Washington title. \u00a0Or Carlos Berlocq<\/a>: It’d be hard to back the dirtballing counterpuncher at a grass-court\u00a0challenger<\/em>. \u00a0He could’ve spent next week as a top-four seed on clay, at Kitzbuhel.<\/p>\n

Maybe for Stepanek, Berlocq, or even Young, the experience will be worth it. \u00a0But every scheduling decision made by a player–especially a veteran–has an impact on his prospects for months to come. \u00a0Is the experience worth dropping down to qualifying at the next several Masters-level events? \u00a0Would missing the experience be acceptable in exchange for getting a cheap ranking boost and earning a seed at the U.S. Open?<\/p>\n

As much as it goes against our nationalist, media-driven instincts, Mardy Fish, Alexander Dolgopolov, and a very small number of other non-Olympians made the smart choice. \u00a0As the first-round losers start to pile up next weekend in London, Washington will look like an excellent place to be.<\/p>\n

After the jump, find a quick explanation of my tournament simulations, along with expected ranking points and prize money for top players in Washington and London.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

To determine “expected ranking points” and “expected prize money,” I started with the current fields for both Washington and the Olympics. \u00a0The 64-man field is set for London, with Feliciano Lopez<\/a> replacing Rafael Nadal<\/a>. \u00a0Qualifiers and WCs are undetermined for Washington, so I used the first eight men on the alternates list instead. \u00a0If anything, that overstates the quality of the Washington field, since a few more players will probably withdraw, and the wild cards are unlikely to be as strong as the first few alternates, who are all ranked in the top 130.<\/p>\n

With those projected fields, I used this week’s rankings to determine seedings, and then randomly generated brackets for monte carlo simulations of the two events. \u00a0Given each player’s chance of reaching each round, we can calculate a weighted average of each player’s points and prize money. \u00a0For instance, Fish has a ~20% chance of winning Washington (500 points, $252,000), a ~30% chance of reaching the final (300 points, $114,000), and so on.<\/p>\n

Listed below are all the players scheduled to be in action at one of the two events, ranked by expected ranking points. The players I used to stand in for qualifiers and wild cards in Washington are also included, even though many of them may not end up in the main draw.<\/p>\n

Event  Player                           p(W)  ePts     e$  \nOLY    (2)Novak Djokovic (SRB)         24.8%   309      0  \nOLY    (1)Roger Federer (SUI)          22.4%   293      0  \nOLY    (3)Andy Murray (GBR)            11.4%   206      0  \nWASH   (1)Mardy Fish (USA)             20.5%   177  72053  \nOLY    (4)David Ferrer (ESP)            6.7%   159      0  \nOLY    (8)Juan Martin del Potro (ARG)   5.4%   139      0  \nOLY    (5)Jo-Wilfried Tsonga (FRA)      5.2%   137      0  \nWASH   (2)Alexandr Dolgopolov (UKR)     9.3%   117  43662  \nWASH   (8)Sam Querrey (USA)             9.4%   116  43103  \nWASH   (3)Kevin Anderson (RSA)          7.5%   105  37923  \n\nEvent  Player                           p(W)  ePts     e$  \nOLY    (6)Tomas Berdych (CZE)           2.8%   103      0  \nWASH   (6)Tommy Haas (GER)              6.0%    93  33053  \nWASH   Xavier Malisse (BEL)             6.1%    89  32440  \nOLY    (10)John Isner (USA)             2.1%    88      0  \nOLY    (7)Janko Tipsarevic (SRB)        1.5%    81      0  \nOLY    (15)Gael Monfils (FRA)           1.6%    78      0  \nWASH   Guillermo Garcia-Lopez (ESP)     4.5%    77  27317  \nWASH   (5)Benoit Paire (FRA)            3.6%    74  25334  \nWASH   Benjamin Becker (GER)            4.1%    74  25884  \nOLY    (13)Marin Cilic (CRO)            1.3%    73      0  \n\nEvent  Player                           p(W)  ePts     e$  \nOLY    (16)Kei Nishikori (JPN)          1.2%    71      0  \nWASH   (7)Jeremy Chardy (FRA)           2.9%    67  22754  \nWASH   Nicolas Mahut (FRA)              3.0%    63  22023  \nWASH   Igor Andreev (RUS)               2.8%    62  21495  \nOLY    (12)Juan Monaco (ARG)            0.8%    62      0  \nOLY    Andy Roddick (USA)               1.1%    61      0  \nWASH   James Blake (USA)                2.6%    60  20640  \nOLY    David Nalbandian (ARG)           1.0%    59      0  \nWASH   Jesse Levine (USA)               2.4%    58  19924  \nOLY    (11)Gilles Simon (FRA)           0.7%    57      0  \n\nEvent  Player                           p(W)  ePts     e$  \nOLY    Mikhail Youzhny (RUS)            0.9%    56      0  \nOLY    (9)Nicolas Almagro (ESP)         0.6%    56      0  \nOLY    (14)Fernando Verdasco (ESP)      0.6%    54      0  \nOLY    Milos Raonic (CAN)               0.8%    53      0  \nWASH   Marinko Matosevic (AUS)          1.9%    52  18046  \nWASH   Bjorn Phau (GER)                 1.8%    52  17849  \nOLY    Stanislas Wawrinka (SUI)         0.7%    52      0  \nWASH   Matthew Ebden (AUS)              1.8%    52  17731  \nOLY    Richard Gasquet (FRA)            0.7%    50      0  \nWASH   Michael Russell (USA)            1.7%    50  17193  \n\nEvent  Player                           p(W)  ePts     e$  \nOLY    Philipp Kohlschreiber (GER)      0.6%    49      0  \nWASH   Jurgen Zopp (EST)                1.4%    47  16140  \nWASH   Edouard Roger-Vasselin (FRA)     1.3%    46  15794  \nOLY    Jurgen Melzer (AUT)              0.5%    45      0  \nOLY    Feliciano Lopez (ESP)            0.5%    45      0  \nOLY    Bernard Tomic (AUS)              0.5%    44      0  \nWASH   Flavio Cipolla (ITA)             1.1%    43  14820  \nOLY    Marcos Baghdatis (CYP)           0.4%    42      0  \nWASH   Tobias Kamke (GER)               1.0%    41  14169  \nOLY    Ivo Karlovic (CRO)               0.3%    40      0  \n\nEvent  Player                           p(W)  ePts     e$  \nWASH   Igor Kunitsyn (RUS)              0.8%    38  13472  \nWASH   Paul Capdeville (CHI)            0.8%    37  13175  \nOLY    Victor Troicki (SRB)             0.3%    37      0  \nOLY    Radek Stepanek (CZE)             0.3%    36      0  \nOLY    Nikolay Davydenko (RUS)          0.2%    36      0  \nOLY    Grigor Dimitrov (BUL)            0.2%    33      0  \nOLY    Ryan Harrison (USA)              0.2%    33      0  \nOLY    David Goffin (BEL)               0.2%    32      0  \nOLY    Denis Istomin (UZB)              0.2%    32      0  \nWASH   (4)Pablo Andujar (ESP)           0.4%    32  11438  \n\nEvent  Player                           p(W)  ePts     e$  \nOLY    Andreas Seppi (ITA)              0.1%    31      0  \nOLY    Jarkko Nieminen (FIN)            0.1%    31      0  \nOLY    Ivan Dodig (CRO)                 0.1%    31      0  \nWASH   Tommy Robredo (ESP)              0.5%    31  11363  \nOLY    Lukasz Kubot (POL)               0.1%    30      0  \nWASH   Paul-Henri Mathieu (FRA)         0.4%    28  10836  \nOLY    Steve Darcis (BEL)               0.1%    28      0  \nOLY    Lukas Lacko (SVK)                0.1%    27      0  \nOLY    Santiago Giraldo (COL)           0.1%    26      0  \nOLY    Thomaz Bellucci (BRA)            0.1%    26      0  \n\nEvent  Player                           p(W)  ePts     e$  \nOLY    Mikhail Kukushkin (KAZ)          0.1%    26      0  \nOLY    Dmitry Tursunov (RUS)            0.1%    25      0  \nOLY    Alejandro Falla (COL)            0.1%    25      0  \nOLY    Donald Young (USA)               0.1%    25      0  \nOLY    Alex Bogomolov Jr (RUS)          0.1%    25      0  \nOLY    Lu Yen-Hsun (TPE)                0.1%    24      0  \nOLY    Olivier Rochus (BEL)             0.1%    24      0  \nOLY    Sergiy Stakhovsky (UKR)          0.0%    23      0  \nOLY    Gilles Muller (LUX)              0.0%    23      0  \nWASH   Leonardo Mayer (ARG)             0.2%    23   9502  \n\nEvent  Player                           p(W)  ePts     e$  \nOLY    Robin Haase (NED)                0.0%    22      0  \nWASH   Federico Delbonis (ARG)          0.2%    22   9354  \nOLY    Vasek Pospisil (CAN)             0.0%    21      0  \nOLY    Malek Jaziri (TUN)               0.0%    21      0  \nOLY    Fabio Fognini (ITA)              0.0%    20      0  \nOLY    Tatsuma Ito (JPN)                0.0%    20      0  \nWASH   Joao Souza (BRA)                 0.1%    20   8981  \nWASH   Horacio Zeballos (ARG)           0.1%    19   8901  \nOLY    Go Soeda (JPN)                   0.0%    19      0  \nOLY    Martin Klizan (SVK)              0.0%    19      0  \n\nEvent  Player                           p(W)  ePts     e$  \nOLY    Somdev Devvarman (IND)           0.0%    18      0  \nOLY    Blaz Kavcic (SLO)                0.0%    18      0  \nWASH   Ruben Ramirez Hidalgo (ESP)      0.0%    16   8272  \nOLY    Carlos Berlocq (ARG)             0.0%    14      0  \nOLY    Lleyton Hewitt (AUS)             0.0%    14      0  \nOLY    Adrian Ungur (ROU)               0.0%    11      0<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Olympics only come every four years, and they have everything: precious metals, prestige, and national pride, along with extremely fit and horny women. That’s good enough for most top players. \u00a018 of the top 20 men are slated to participate, and nearly every player in the 64-man draw is ranked inside the top 100. … Continue reading Why More Players Should Have Skipped the Olympics<\/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":[81,119],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-olympics","category-washington"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/802","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=802"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/802\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}