Djokovic, Nadal jostle for Year End Number 1 position

After losing his No 1 spot to Rafael Nadal in October, Novak Djokovic promised to make a final push to reclaim the spot and secure the coveted Year End No 1 position for the third time in his career. I didn’t agree because I felt he had too many points to defend. Also, he initially didn’t enter to play in Paris. However, things changed quickly and as it stands, if he beats David Ferrer today at the BNP Paribas Masters Finals in Paris, he will have more points than Rafael Nadal.

	Current points*	Djokovic wins BNP	Ferrer wins BNP
Rafael Nadal	11,670	12,030 (+360)	12,030 (+360)
Novak Djokovic	11,120	12,110 (990)	11,710 (+590)

*Correct at 2 Nov 2013. Djokovic got 10points at this event last year.

UPDATE: However, according to new rules, he'll also lose the 1,500 points he won last year on monday, instead of at the end of the tournament as is normal for other ATP events.

Back in October, Novak Djokovic apparently realised what most people didn’t: Nadal plays poorly in Indoor events. His win ratio in outdoor events is 85.9% while his record in indoor events stands at 65.9%. He has won only two indoor titles in his career (source: ATPWorldTour.Com). Also, most post-USOpen events are on hard surface, theoretically Nadal’s worst surface (Nadal’s performance on hard court this year seems to have made people forget this). And what more, Novak is the best hard court player out there.

But reclaiming World Number 1 is one thing, securing the Year End No 1 accolade is another. That is Novak’s ultimate target but that is where the odds are stacked up against him.

There is only one event left for the year, the season-closing annual ATP World  Tour Finals in London featuring the Top 8 players in the world. There are 1,500 points at stake, but Novak won the event last year and will therefore not add to his points. He could even lose some! (I explained how it works here).

Therefore, the only realistic chance Novak Djokovic has of finishing the year as No 1 (if he beats David Ferrer today) is if wins all his matches in London while hoping Nadal loses all his. Even though the event will be on hard court and indoor (yeah, two bad combinations for Nadal, I know), Nadal has been drawn against players against whom he has terribly lopsided winning records. He is in Group A alongside David Ferrer (20-5), Stanislas Wawrinka (11-0) and Tomas Berdych (16-3).

This is how the 1,500 points are won: a win in each group game fetches 200 points, a semi final win gives a further 400 points and the Champion gets 500 more points. Even if Djokovic wins five matches in London and his three matches at the Davis Cup later in the year, he still have to hope Nadal doesn't get two wins in London.

The only scenario I see here is Nadal winning at least 2 matches, getting beaten in the semi final but still finishing the year as World Number One. Sorry Novak, try again next year.

Deaf Nation

Nigeria is fifty-three, Nigeria is fifty-three
Five decades and 3 years of lies and treachery
Travesty of injustice surplus and rife
Discrimination on every side, democracy mystified

Pretentious attention and dismissive apprehension
Dying of anticipation and choking from intoxication
A society blinded by ethnicity and heading for mutiny
When all we really need is unity

Fellow patriots let’s as one arise
Redeem our pledge to serve with heart and might
Let’s keep seeking and surely we shall find
As we walk this thin fine line under the microscope of life

Take my hand be my brother
Why suppress one for the benefit of another
Take my hand be my sister
For we may rise and fall but in the end we meet our fate together

And as we lie beneath the stars
We realize how small we are
If they could love like you and me
Imagine what our nation could be

If everyone cared and nobody cried
If everyone loved and nobody lied
If everyone shared, and swallowed their pride
Then we’d see the day when nobody died

                                             

                                                This poem was written by Uzodinma Nwankwo

 

A short look at how the tennis ranking system works

Just before the French Open in May/June, Rafael Nadal was ranked No 4, based mainly on the strength of his breathtaking return to tennis after a seven-month injury lay-off. He was seeded 4 for the 2^nd major of the year in Paris, ahead of World No 5 David Ferrer. As expected, he won the tournament with a dominant 6-3 6-2 6-3 victory over fellow Spaniard David Ferrer. It therefore came as a surprise when the following day, Rafael Nadal dropped to No 5 and was replaced by the man he defeated the previous day, David Ferrer in the World Number 4 position.

So what happened?

The current tennis ranking system calculates how many points a player earns over a rolling 12-month period. Rankings are updated weekly throughout the year, except when a grand slam is underway they are updated after the tournament. How does it work? I’ll  give a very short explanation using a few examples from the US Open 2013. First, let me start by giving a summary of how many points are awarded for the tournaments.

 

ATP (Men’s Tennis)

Tournament level	Winner	Finalist	Semi Final	Quarter Final	Round of 16
Grand slams	2000	1200	720	360	180
Masters 1000	1000	600	360	180	90
ATP 500	500	300	180	90	45
ATP 250	250	150	90	45
Barclays ATP Tour finals	1500 (undefeated champion)	500 (final win)	400 (semi final win)	200 (round robin win per match)

Note:

1.       Points are also earned for Davis Cup and Olympic wins. As a general rule, The Top 30 players (based on previous year's year-end ranking) must play a minimum of four ATP 500 level tournaments during the calendar year, including at least one event following the US Open.

2.       To qualify for the year-ending Barclays ATP Tour finals, the points earned in the preceding 12 months will be used.

WTA (Women’s Tennis)

Tournament level	Winner	Finalist	Semi Final	Quarter Final	Round of 16
Grand slams	2000	1400	900	500	280
Masters 1000	1000	700	450	250	140
Premier 900	900	620	395	225	125
Premier 470	470	320	200	120	60
Wta Championships – Istanbul	1500 (undefeated champion)	360 (final win)	460 (semi final win)	230 for each round robin match won, 70 for each round robin match lost

 

 

Now let’s consider the US Open 2013 and the top 3 male players

Player	Pre-US Open 2013 Points	2012 US Open results	Scenario
Novak Djokovic	10980	Finalist	-  If he wins, he’ll add 800 points -  If he finishes runner up, he’ll not add any point -  If he doesn’t make the final, he’ll lose points
Rafael Nadal	8860	Absent	Any point he wins adds to his existing points because he didn’t win any point from last year.
Andy Murray	8700	Winner	-  If he wins, he’ll not add any point -  If he doesn’t win, he’ll lose points

Let me explain.

When coming into this year’s US Open, every point won by a player in last year’s US Open automatically gets deducted from his total points because it doesn’t form part of the new rolling 12-month period. He will have to earn those points all over again.

Consider Murray. He had 8700 points pre-US Open 2013. Because he won the 2012 event, he immediately loses the 2000 points this year. And since he was knocked out in the quarter final stage, he wins only 360 points. His total points post-USOpen 2013 therefore will be (8700-2000+360) = 7060

Ditto Djokovic.  He had 10980 points pre-US Open 2013. Because he finished as runner-up 2012 event, he immediately loses 1200 points this year. Because he finished runner-up again this year, his total points post-US Open 2013 therefore will be (10980-1200+1200) = 10980.

For Nadal, there were no points to lose, so all the 2000 points he won in winning this year’s US Open event will count towards his total points. Hence his new points total post-US Open 2013 will be (8860+2000)= 10860, just behind Djokovic.
In fact, because he was out injured between July 2012 - January 2013, every point he wins until end of January 2014 will add to his ranking points. In tennis parlance, he’s said to “have no point to defend”. This is also why he’s likely to finish the year as World Number One (Novak Djokovic has to defend the 3,000 points he won in London, Shanghai and Dubai before the end of the year).

For the Women, there was no change in either ranking points or position in the Top 2 because they (Serena Williams and Victoria Azarenka) finished the same way they did last year. But the general rules are the same.

 

The tennis ranking system is designed to recognise the current form of players and to discourage top players from missing tournaments. A player is prevented from earning points from the same event two years in a row unless he/she performs better than the previous year. In my opinion, it’s the fairest system that the tennis bodies could have come up with, despite the pockets of criticism. At least it is very easy to calculate, unlike the FIFA and UEFA Ranking Systems that no one seems able to interpret with relative certainty.

Note:

This post has been updated to take account of the result of the US Open Men’s final, won by Rafael Nadal.

You can follow me via @mcgboye

How to Prepare Amortization Schedule in Excel: 10 Steps

How to Prepare Amortization Schedule in Excel: 10 Steps

This tutorial first appeared on www.wikinow.com

A look at the “Mourinho doesn’t like academy players” myth.

I recently read this article on Goal.com written by Srinivasan Mohan where he opined that “Mourinho's Chelsea return doesn't augur well for academy players”. This is in tandem with a widely-accepted claim that the self-styled Special One (or is it Happy One?) does not encourage his clubs’ academy players to make the transition to first teams, unlike big managers like Sir Alex (now retired), Arsene Wenger and Pep Guardiola. People who throw around these suppositions hardly bother to find out why, if at all such insinuations are actually valid. Well, here I try to look at the peculiar situations of Jose Mourinho’s last three big jobs with a view to finding out why academy players didn’t form the fulcrum of his teams.

There is no doubt that Jose Mourinho hardly promoted any youth team player at Chelsea during his first stint, but that’s simply because there wasn’t any top talent available in the youth team to be promoted. He was hired by Roman Abramovich to bring trophies to Stamford Bridge and given a war-chest to achieve that. He was not put in charge of the Academy, and the failure thereof cannot be put squarely on him. Since he left Chelsea, how many academy players have been promoted to the first team? One – Ryan Betrand, and even he cannot start for many Championship sides. Unlike what most people think, quality academies like Barcelona’s famed La Masia require huge level of funding, something most club owners don’t want to do. Okay, what of Inter? Well, as far as I know, the best young player in Inter was Mario Balotelli and he was used a lot by Mourinho despite his glaring behavioral flaws. David Santon played a lot of games too. At Real Madrid, he is credited to have used the academy players more than any Madrid manager in recent history. I remember both Nacho and Morata starting the 2-1 el-clasico win in April 2013. Of course he still made some strange decisions concerning the academy players, like not playing perhaps the academy’s best player, Jese Rodriguez.

Sir Alex Ferguson won the 1999 historic treble with a team which fulcrum was from the Manchester United Academy. In his tribute to Sir Alex Ferguson, United legend Gary Neville wrote that,: “both he (Sir Alex) and his assistants would work every single minute God sent with every single footballer at that club. It was not just youth team games he would come to watch. When we were 14-years-old he would even come down to watch us train as schoolboys on a Thursday night”. But in the years leading to his retirement, he had to dig more into the transfer market for quality. What changed? He simply didn’t have as much time with the youth teams as he used to due to the demands of the modern game.

Even Arsene Wenger, the "father" of academy players, has not been promoting players like he used to due to increased pressure by fans for quick success. In a typical Arsenal starting line-up these days, only Szczęsny, Gibbs and Wilshere are graduates of the club’s academies. The rest were sourced from other clubs.  

The reason why Pep Guardiola was successful bringing young players through at Barcelona was largely because he was the coach at Barcelona B and he had spent a year with the team, winning promotion, so he knew them. When he stepped up to the first team, he had no trouble bringing in his trusted lieutenants from the youth team set-up. Of course it still required a high level of confidence and bravery to replace the big stars with such budding talents as Sergio Busquets and Pedro, but the fact that he had spent quality time watching them play week-in, week-out made his decision easier to made. Contrast that with Tito Vilanova, his assistant for those four utterly successful years on the Camp Nou hotseat. Tito won the La Liga with Barcelona in his first year, but compared with Pep Guardiola he hardly used the young players. Isaac Cuenca and Gerard Deulofeu have gone on loan, Thiago Alcantara is on his way to Bayern Munich or Manchester United and no new youngster has really been promoted. In contrast, another young player Neymar was signed from Brazil for a reported €50-70 million from Santos. It is not like Tito doesn’t like Barca’s new La Masia players, it’s simply because he doesn’t really know them, at least in the way Pep did.

And how about Pep? He’s now the coach of Bayern Munich, and no, he’s not about to start scouring Bayern’s youth team for talents. He’s been busy buying the best young legs in Europe. Similarly, he has not abandoned his policy of using players from youth teams, but they have to be players he knows which is clearly not the case at Bayern Munich.

That is the situation Jose Mourinho has had to face at his clubs. Those clubs were in need of someone with some quick fixes and the chief of them all was Real Madrid. It’s the biggest club in the world, and managers are usually advised to be on the look-out for their next job the very day they’re appointed. This has been the problem with the club in the past decade, and Mourinho was able to bring some Castilla players through the first team simply because he had a whooping three years to work. As stated earlier, more players from the Real Madrid youth teams made their first team debuts under Mourinho than under any manager in recent times. Maybe he could have done more at his previous clubs, but again it was not his fault that those clubs didn’t have quality talents coming through the youth ranks.

The issue is only going to get worse because for most big clubs, and despite the threat of UEFA’s Financial Fair Play rule, the priority is always to acquire ready-made stars that will guarantee immediate success and also bring in much-needed commercial gains. However, it does seem, at least to me, that most of the criticism leveled at Jose Mourinho has been very unfair and imbalanced.

You can follow me on @mcgboye