I'm confused.. help me out here

Question

according to the latest atp ranking aug. 4th federer has 6680 pts and nadal has 6455 pts.

http://www.atptennis.com/3/en/rankings/EntrySystem/default.asp?rank=100&country=&RankDate=8/4/2008

and I know that cincinnati's points aren't removed yet so when they're removed federer will be 6180 and nadal will be 6420 "35 pts for reaching 2nd round in 2007"

and also according to this :

http://www.stevegtennis.com/07atpres.htm

the rogers cup last year started in aug 6th so its points also are not yet removed and will be removed at the end of this week.. so federer will lose 350 and will be 5830 and nadal will lose 225 and will be 6195

so they will be only 365 points apart... why do people keep saying that they will be 500 points apart? some people even said 1000???

and if federer wins the olympics and nadal loses early nadal will not be #1 because the olympics gold medal match will be aug 17th,one day before nadal is supposed to be announced #1..

tell me where I'm wrong and sorry for giving you a headache!!!

Answer 1

It's very confusing and never easy to totally understand. However just keep in mind that the rankings aren't updated every week of the year or after every single tournament. I believe it only gets updated after a few select tournaments, mainly Grandslam events, and then a couple other times during the year.

Right now Rafael Nadal has enough points to take over Roger Federer from the top spot, and because of this, he is currently the number one rank player in the world UNOFFICIALLY. However because the rankings will be updated on August 18th, then and only then will Nadal become the new world number one, OFFICIALLY.

If Nadal had won the Cincinnati Masters then he would have been the number one rank player on that day, right after he won the final. That did not happen, so they are following the rules of the calender and will update the rankings next on August 18th.

As for the whole Olympic scenario that you spoke about. Gosh you make a good point and I wish I had a conclusive  answer for you. All I can say is that the Olympics is a like the fifth slam of the year and I would guess that because the Cincinnati Masters, the Olympics and the US Open were so closely apart from each other, they perhaps felt it would be better to update the rankings right after the Olympics and  before the US Open begins, than after the Cincinnati Masters. If they had updated it after the Cincinnati Masters then Nadal would be officially rank number one today. However he can only ascend to this position when the official rankings are updated on Aug 18th.

But if the scenario you spoke about was to work out at the Olympics then I still believe Nadal would be rank number one. Remember based on your calculations you said that after the points are removed from the Roger's Cup and Cincinnati Masters, Nadal would have 6195 points to Federer's 5830. Thats a 365 point difference.

Whoever wins the Olympics gets 400 points for winning the gold medal. I am not sure if they award the bonus points for beating ranked opponents and the round points you get for advancing further and further in a tournament in the mens game. But if they do, then this means that the person who wins will be getting a lot more than 400 points for winning the tournament. Anyway because of this system it seems that Roger will have the slimmest of margins to keep his number one position, as long as Nadal makes a deep run in the Olympics.  

At least that's my understanding of what is going on. Hope this helps.

Answer 2

This is giving me a headache -_-.

Just to clarify, I think a lot of people are confused about how the ranking works so I think it is understandable that people misinterpret how the ranking system works (including me, sorry!)

What I got from how the system works is that points are added when the event finished at the end of the week, and points from a previous event that one played the previous year don't get there points taken away till 2-3 weeks after the event the following year.

Sorry if it's confusing what I just said.