YEAR ENd 2008 - Ontario Tennis Association

ThE ROGERS RANKING SYSTEM
The Rogers Ranking System
The Rogers Ranking System
was implemented by Tennis
Canada for junior and open
competitive players effective
January 1, 2009. It is an integrated
national and provincial ranking system.
Similar ranking systems are used by the
top tennis nations of the world including
the highly competitive nations of
Spain, France and Germany. With the
Rogers Ranking System players will be
able to compare themselves to all provincial
and national competitors. i.e. an
U12 competitor will be ranked within
the same framework as Canada's top
ranked players.
Prior to the implementation of this
system, Tennis Canada and all the
Provincial Tennis Associations used different
ranking systems and supporting
databases, which resulted in inconsistent
rankings between players on a national
and provincial basis and between categories
of competition.
The Rogers Ranking System brings
together the tournament management,
schedule integration and on line player
history capabilities of the OTA’s existing
Baseline computer system while
incorporating the head to head ranking
method which has been used successfully
for open and junior players in the
province of Quebec for roughly twenty
years. Players will continue to have the
ability to view and track their rankings
and match-by-match history details on
line. It is anticipated that using head to
head results from all designated tournaments
across Canada will improve
ranking accuracy. It is also hoped that
tournament seeding will be able to be
derived more directly from the rankings
because results of all matches in
designated events will be calibrated in
the same database regardless of the age
category of the event.
In fact the OTA is continuing to run
the ranking systems in parallel until
they can install the new
version of the Baseline system
in the Spring, which
will enable them to switch
to the head to head system.
The Tennis Canada
Ranking Committee
with oversee the Rogers
Ranking System. The
committee is comprised
of six regional provincial
staff members and
Tennis Canada's director
of national events and
manager of tennis development.
The committee
will determine which
provincial, national and
international tournaments
will be eligible for ranking
purposes and what the star
value of various classes
of events will be. The star
value system will allow for
high profile events to result in larger
point gains and losses. A table of point
gains and losses by star value is included
in Fig 1.
The Rogers Ranking System has been
run in parallel with the existing rankings
systems throughout 2008. This has
provided invaluable input to the various
national and provincial ranking committees
who were charged with the task
of setting initial point values for all players
in the system at its inception.
In order for an unranked player to
become ranked, a player must accumulate
at least one win and two losses
against players who are already ranked
over the course of 12 months. In order
for ranked players to maintain a ranking
they must play 10 matches in eligible
sanctioned events each calendar year.
Adult players who do not complete for a
year or junior players who do not compete
for nine months will be considered
inactive and lose their ranking. Results
against players that do not have an initial
ranking will be counted towards
the rankings once the unranked player
becomes ranked. The BASELINE ranking
system has a built-in feature that
automatically checks for this each time
a ranking is run. Once the unranked
player in question becomes ranked, the
result will be counted retroactively for
both players during the next ranking
period. Similarly if there is a delay in
tournament results being submitted and
enetered to the system, the system will
automatically allow for point differences
arising from timing.
Since the Rogers Rankings will be
programmed using the Baseline management
system, all results (provincial
and national) will be stored in a common
competitive database. Provincial
and national updates will be done simultaneously.
Tennis Canada currently is
scheduled to run ranking updates on
Mondays? and on a weekly basis.
All players will be included in the
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OTA YEARBOOK / WINTER 2009