Welcome to the first issue of SRI Rankings Top 50 Women. In the nearly two years that I've been compiling the SRI Rankings Top 50 Men, the most common question has been "When are you bringing out the WTA version?" (Next most common was "Where's Tim Henman?" ;-) ) It took a bit longer than expected, mainly because the raw data is not available in as neat a format as Jacqueline Dupree provides for the ATP results. But thanks to Chris Smith's years of archives, and Michael Duffy's comprehensive collection of the '96 Tour, I've been able to produce an SRI Rankings table which appears to be as reliable as the Men's has been. The URLs for both these archives are available from the blurb below.

The other reason that the Men's had a higher priority was that the WTA Ranking has been more credible than the ATP Ranking for the past few years. As you will notice below, SRI does not disagree with the WTA Ranking to anywhere near the extent that it does with the ATP. All of the WTA's top 50 are in the SRI top 55! However, it must be said that the correlation with the old ranking system (with averaging) was better.

There are a few things to be remarked upon. First, Steffi Graf's rating of 1685 is way ahead of Pete Sampras's current 1249. This does reflect the huge quality gap between the top women and the average player on the tour, and with the spread of ratings you see below, the relative rankings should be a reasonable judge of the better players. Second, the WTA does not rank retired players. This I find odd, but anyway ... I've left Date's and Sabatini's results in the mix. Third, the rare oddities: Jennifer Capriati is ranked number 10! The WTA has dropped her from 24 to 36 with the change in system; Natasha Zvereva and Sandra Cecchini are two others who SRI rates more highly than the WTA computer does; while Elena Likhovtseva, Katarina Studenikova, and Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario are brought down considerably; Graf is a massive 197 points clear of Seles.

A quick roundup for those who are new to the SRI Rankings Top 50: (1) You can subscribe to either of the mailing lists (Top 50 Men or Top 50 Women) by writing to darren@aaii.oz.au (2) Tennis Worldwide Magazine carries an HTML version of the Men's chart: look at http://www.tennisw.com/twmag/ (3) See the blurb below for more information, and don't hesitate to write!

SRI Rankings Top 50 Issue #W1. 3rd Jan 1997
Rank	Name	Rating Points	WTA Rank
1	Steffi Graf	1685	1
2	Monica Seles	1488	2
3	Jana Novotna	1430	5
4	Martina Hingis	1373	6
5	Lindsay Davenport	1307	9
6	Conchita Martinez	1292	4
7	Arantxa Sanchez Vicario	1285	3
8	Kimiko Date	1222	(ret)
9	Anke Huber	1199	7
10	Jennifer Capriati	1184	36
11	Iva Majoli	1105	8
12	Barbara Paulus	1037	13
13	Magdalena Maleeva	1024	19
14	Julie Halard-Decugis	1010	20
15	Chanda Rubin	987	17
16	Irina Spirlea	985	10
17	Karina Habsudova	967	11
18	Sabine Appelmans	956	21
19	Judith Wiesner	952	15
20	Amanda Coetzer	943	14
21	Mary Joe Fernandez	939	16
22	Meredith McGrath	920	26
23	Brenda Schultz-McCarthy	898	12
24	Natasha Zvereva	898	57
25	Mary Pierce	897	24
26	Gabriela Sabatini	877	(ret)
27	Lisa Raymond	860	27
28	Nathalie Tauziat	855	22
29	Helena Sukova	847	35
30	Ai Sugiyama	843	28
31	Linda Wild	831	29
32	Kimberly Po	813	23
33	Ruxandra Dragomir	805	25
34	Sabine Hack	792	43
35	Amy Frazier	790	33
36	Dominique van Roost	772	48
37	Florencia Labat	771	42
38	Yayuk Basuki	768	30
39	Shi-Ting Wang	763	40
40	Barbara Schett	758	32
41	Elena Likhovtseva	743	18
42	Sandrine Testud	726	41
43	Henrieta Nagyova	724	37
44	Anne Miller	724	49
45	Barbara Rittner	722	47
46	Kristie Boogert	709	55
47	Asa Carlsson	705	39
48	Sandra Cecchini	702	80
49	Katarina Studenikova	701	31
50	Miriam Oremans	696	46
NQ	Anne-Gaelle Sidot	740	50
51	Silvia Farina	688	34
52	Naoko Kijimuta	683	45
54	Laurence Courtois	671	44
55	Naoko Sawamatsu	671	38

blurb version 2.1

These are the current full-year ratings of top players according to a "spectral radius" program. Spectral radius algorithms have had much success with college sports and some other sports in giving a mathematically reliable ranking of the teams/players involved.

This ranking is not intended to completely replace the WTA Ranking. In fact, it shows that the WTA system is more reliable than most people think.

However, this system removes the two most disliked aspects of the WTA Computer ranking: (1) the point-accumulation system is replaced by an arbitrary 20-match qualification cut-off, allowing good players to show up earlier, and nullifying point-gathering by players by including even the weakest results in the average; (2) the stagger is virtually eliminated, by (in most cases) replacing last year's results only when the corresponding tournament is played this year. Note that both qualifying and main draw results for all the Tour events are used.

SRI = Spectral Radius at Infinity. For a relevant reference, see

"The Perron-Frobenius Theorem and the Ranking of Football Teams" by James P. Keener, SIAM Review, v.35 no.1, p.80 (1993)

SRI Rankings Top 50 mailing list subscriptions (either Men's or Women's tennis rankings) and back issues are available by writing to the address below. An HTML version of this chart is available via Tennis Worldwide Magazine, http://www.tennisw.com/twmag/

Thanks to Chris Smith and Michael Duffy ( http://www.mindspring.com/~csmith/TennisNews.html and http://www.ibmpcug.co.uk/~michaeld/wta.htm respectively) for the data.