BONUS: Tennis Re-Lived - The History of the Rankings

37:10I'm not hearing any pushback.

37:14Yeah, look, this next twist in the tale is another one of my favourites, because in the early days of this system, the ATP did not even own the computer that produced the rankings. and we're talking about a physical computer here, ATP employees would take the reams of player statistics that they had to a nearby Los Angeles aerospace company, TRW Inc. in El Segundo in Santa Monica Bay to run through their mainframe. The rankings would then be delivered on gigantic sheets of computer paper to be pasted up in the ATP office and distributed at circuit events around the world. Dennis Spencer, who replaced Bob Kramer on ATP rankings duty in 1975, says Bob made an agreement with a guy from TRW to process the rankings.

38:14Most journalists thought that made sense because in their minds, the ATP rankings might as well have been from outer space. Yes. Bob Kramer recalls, I struck a deal with Simon Ramo of TRW to provide a resource based on a point system to establish the rankings, which was one of the key principles behind the founding of the ATP in 1972. Ramo was a renowned physicist, engineer and LA business leader and founder and the R in aerospace manufacturing legend TRW. As a tennis enthusiast, neighbour and a friend of Jack Kramer's, he loaned us the computer time and initially one of his computer engineers, Bob Curl, to help the ATP run the rankings data each month and eventually weekly.

39:04weekly. Administered by a panel of people, tournaments were initially divided into categories A, B and C etc which enabled event organisers to select the players according to their ATP ranking and determine seedings. I provided the tournament results and related information to Bob Curl. Curl then imputed the data into a server the size of the first floor of the ATP America's office in Ponte Vedra Beach, which was over 2 ,000 square metres. Within three days, Simon and Bob returned the rankings on huge perforated sheets. I remember putting ATP ranking sheets from floor to ceiling week after week on the walls of our LA office.

39:49I would double check results, circle inaccuracies, and if required, return the sheets to TRW for a rerun because the ATP produced the rankings once a month in the first few years. We had the time for the manual process, unlike today. Dennis Spencer confirmed those memories of Bob Kramer's, but he insists that there were many weeks when, for whatever reason, the computer didn't work, so I did the rankings by hand. I would print the previous rankings out on the large computer paper, lay it out on my living room floor, get on my hands and knees to mark out the weeks that were dropping off, add the new results and calculate the new rankings.

40:32Sometimes we would have to telephone to verify that the tournament had even taken place. Often I would call and call until someone at a tournament picked up the phone to tell me who won. heck of a flex from dennis spencer there to say that he was able to do the work of a 2 000 square meter um aerospace computer on his hands and knees on the office floor i've been in that ponzo vidro office that is a big old space i mean i can't imagine um but this does tally with my recollections of watching tennis in the early 80s where the commentators would refer to where a player was on the computer. They wouldn't say in the rankings.

41:18They would say, she is 23 on the computer. And I didn't realize they were referring to just the one computer

41:27Steve Flink:because that's the only one that was able to do it. I mean, my dad worked in computers in the 70s and 80s. And I mean, some of the pictures we've got up around of him with massive computers like that, so I can very much envisage it all and I mean from there the first few years the the the rankings were distributed internally and and posted on press and locker room walls after the ATP had received permission from tournaments to post them basically that they wanted to confirm yes indeed you have got that right and now the players and the press can get to see them if the players were at home. They would be calling the ATP office to find out where they were in the rankings, or there'd be a slip of post coming to them to tell them where they were in the world.

42:22In 1976, the ATP launched the International Tennis Weekly newspaper. And I mean, to me, that is where my ATP story begins, because I think probably the first thing I was given in my first stay on the job in 1998 was a copy of the ITW the International Tennis Weekly because it was it was all anybody cared about it was the reference point players would be in our office as ATB communications people like lining up for you to give them this thing because it had the rankings in there um journalists were you know journalists would be calling up from all around the world can you fax me the itw please um you know stan smith recalls if jim mcmanus who was who when i arrived at the atp was a was a member of the the the the board you know he was a very influential figure but he was a former player if jim mcmanus or another member of the atp board arrived with an international tennis weekly he would get besieged by other players any player reading an ITW would get mobbed as at the time was the only way to find out you're ranking another pertinent tournament information and that was the case in 1998 when I joined and it was for several years I mean my great university friend Alex Kennison who I met at the in the first week in Freshers Week at Loughborough University we both sort of wanted to be tennis journalists we didn't know each other we never met each other we met at the newspaper um uh sort of induction meeting for the university and um and spent the next two years comparing tennis notes and he was my one tennis friend in the world and and and he got a job at the atp i helped him get a job at the atp a couple of years after i joined and his job was editor of the itw and it was such prestige to have this position um because you know it was so important i mean it you know it doesn't exist anymore but for years and years and years it was the most important thing and at one point they they hired a guy who slightly changed the editorial style of the itw i think he was like sacked after about a month because the play because he was he was writing it in a way the players didn't like and it was so important um not alex i should say he was very popular the way he wrote um but um Yeah, and if we go back to the 70s, as the years pass by, you see how the rankings were getting published with greater frequency.

44:59You know, we just think of it as this every week thing. But in 1973, it was published 11 times. In 1975, that was up to 13 times. By 76, it had added 10 more, so 23. And then, you know, by 1979, you're up to 43 publications of the rankings. So it's basically weekly. um the wta rankings began in 1975 and closely resembled what the atp were doing and then the doubles ranking started a year after that um and a bit more a bit more sort of context here from dennis spencer who said you know there was a bit of a contradiction between where people were coming from what people liked some tournaments really wanted this sort of legitimate way to determine and who was in and who was out of the tournaments based on rankings.

45:48And others liked the past where they could sort of just decide unilaterally what players were going to be in tournaments and which ones weren't. I can pretty much tell which size you're sitting on there, Catherine. Most players accepted the ATP rankings, but there was controversy initially about what they were for. Were they to recognize the best tennis player in the world or was it for the best player of the week, the fortnight or 365 days a year you know there's just that there's a there's a kind of process of it becoming accepted which which is something i really didn't realize until we started researching this show and of course the thing that steve flink hinted at there in his um in his interview was that you know he was talking about 1975 and there and there's still being this debate about whether it was arthur ash or jimmy connors who was number one of course that's after the official rankings have already up and running and been started and that that goes to show that even after the rankings had been set up in 1973 lance tingay and journalists were still publishing their own rankings at the end of the year that process continued there was very much the official rankings which were used you know for tournaments and you know going back now we talk about Nastasya is the first number one those are the official rankings for sure no one's really disputing those but at the same time people got so used to the journalists publishing their rankings and waiting for those rankings and in the early days those were still being published as well so So you would have the official rankings and then you would have the journalists as well weighing in.

47:36And that continued for a number of years. You know, Bud Collins would do his rankings. And then I think by the sort of 90s, late 90s, that was very much phased out and it was very much just the official rankings. But, yeah, there was definitely a period there where you would have overlap. And sometimes the journalists would be disagreeing with the computer. we could revive that we could publish our own end of year rankings couldn't we for fun for funsies yeah uh let's hear now from the great tennis journalist and historian who's always uh so generous with his time whenever we we ask him to contribute to one of these shows which is quite often because he is such an incredible resource.

48:27Again, his mind is a palace. This is Richard Evans talking about the importance of this period of change for the integrity of the sport. We're actually doing a show on the history of the ranking system in tennis,

48:45Steve Flink:which is the most important thing that's happened to the game. OK, well, let's start there. Tell me, Richard, why is the ranking system the most important thing that happens to the game? Well, one reason is that I have never, ever heard had a player come up to me and complain about his ranking or her, which is fairly amazing when you think about it. And it is because the rankings are untouched apart from one moment when they included the Davis Cup and now is the United Cup anyway. way. Basically, it is untouched by human hand. The only thing you have to do to become number one in the world is win tennis matches.

49:29Steve Flink:If you go on winning tennis matches, you become number one in the world without losing. And that is the basis of it. Once we got the ATP formed, the first thing on our agenda or their agenda i joined them and you know a year later or something uh was to produce a ranking list can you can you remember the conversations that led to its formulation under the atp well yes it was the number one topic of conversation i mean the people who formed the tour i mean it was jack and arthur and cliff and jim mcmanus and uh you know that group who were the driving force, and no one had to tell them that getting a ranking list that was not based on the opinions of a couple of journos was the first order of business.

50:28Steve Flink:And that became instantly, we'll talk about the WTA sort of followed on, But that became the ATP's prized possession. That gave them power. That gave them influence. Because the ranking list is everything. Then and now, you talk to a player about his ambitions and his progress and whatever. It's not about money. The money comes. The money arrives automatically. It's your ranking list that gets him up in the morning and sends him to bed at night. we realised that it was the most important thing the ATP did or had in their possession. No mincing words there from Richard on the importance of the whole thing.

51:22Isn't he brilliant? I just love talking to him. He's still such an emphatic voice. He's well into his 80s now and he's just so powerful in the way he speaks. I mean, I tell you, I had some real run-ins with Richard about the rankings when they were changed a couple of times. And he was terrifying because he felt so passionate about them and he would speak so strongly. And I would try to stand up to him and stuff. But, I mean, a lot of it I now look back and I think, well, you know what? He was right. But what a voice. What a voice of the sport. To have Steve and Richard contribute into the show, I think it's a real treat.

52:05And he really is right to be, this isn't me trying to push my agenda here, but he's right to be so forceful and emphatic about the significance of something concrete and objective, or at least accepted as objective. There's something so powerful and seductive about that, just sort of a cold, hard truth, you know, that can't be argued with. It's what football tried to achieve with VAR, isn't it? They were seduced by the idea that, you know, you could make offside just an objective ruling. And it turns out you couldn't. It's just Kevin Friend. but tennis has achieved it I feel like with its with its line calling you know and and it has yeah and I think that it took while to get to where we are with the ranking system but you're right I mean it's it's genius really that they that they got there but what's fascinating is there was such a process to it and you know obviously it is still it's still something that has been concocted by humans.

53:27Like there is a world in which players would be coming up to ATP employees and complaining about their rankings. Just like with Hawkeye, I know it's not Hawkeye anymore, but just with electronic review, like we all know there's a margin for error, but everybody has just accepted that it's objective enough and solid enough that we can all trust it and just accept it and not waste our energy on querying it. And that's something not to be taken for granted, I think, that tennis has achieved that. And I think Richard makes that point really, really well. So this system, how did the rankings actually work?

54:15This is from Susie Petkovsky's article. We referenced Susie early in her article for the Australian Open website. Today's ranking system is unrecognisable from the first iteration. This is writing in 2023, Matt, I believe. Yeah, the 50-year anniversary. The 50-year anniversary. So the history of tinkering, tweaking and redesign of the rankings highlights that there's no perfect system. Whatever the methodology, the ranking system has to strike a credible balance between quality and quantity, between recognising the Grand Slams as the temples of the sport and rewarding week-in, week-out consistency at ATP events where the majority of players earn their livelihood.

54:59It must reward champions while giving incentive to underdogs to climb the ladder without skewing in favour of one group at the expense of another. And finding that formula has been a case of trial and error over the years, far more so than I realised. I doubt that's true for David, who was there for a lot of the trial and a lot of the error. Let's go through a few of them. We have bonus points. Now, bonus points were a part of the ATP ranking system from 1973 until 1999, initially for beating seeded opponents and then amended in 1983 to mean that bonus points were based on the ranking of the player defeated and awarded no matter the round.

55:46So this is a little bit like ELO for those nerds out there. Bonus points were universally loathed by top players who felt they added a bounty to their heads in addition to the pressure of defending their hefty points from the biggest events. If you beat a number one ranked player at a tournament, you received maximum bonus points with a sliding score for beating players ranked 2-5, 6-10, 11-20 and so on. Your bonus points haul could make a big difference to your rankings position. I bet that caused some hoo-ha in its day, David. Yeah, and I mean, yes, I do recall top players not loving that. And I think probably it did contribute to maybe more upsets in a way, because there was something tangible for beating a top player.

56:44I mean, obviously, there was reputationally a big deal. But I mean, there were periods where there were a lot of world number ones in a short space of time, not like now, where you've got somebody dominating for long, long periods. And so if you manage to catch a world number one in their little period of being world number one, and some people it was a couple of weeks, you get loads more points. I liked it. I've always slightly lamented its passing as part of the measurement. And yeah, I mean, it was part of what I was inducted into when I joined the ATP in February of 1998. and I remember it being phased out as part of a lot of changes and I think it's something that was cool, just added a little bit more spice to early round matches.

57:39What I hadn't quite appreciated about bonus points was I thought they were awarded relatively based on the player's rankings, the player you've beaten's ranking relative to yours. I didn't think they were, I didn't think, for example, the world number six was getting bonus points for beating the world number five. But it sounds like on the basis of this, there were that even the world number two could get bonus points. Yeah. So Yannick Sinner is getting, no, Carlos Alcaraz is getting bonus points for beating Yannick Sinner. I believe it was also double at the Grand Slams and at the, I can't remember whether it was the Masters 1000s as well, but certainly at the Slams, I believe you got double bonus points.

58:31Do you like it, Matt? I don't, actually. It's one of those things to me that is fun. Like, I do like the fun of it. Matt likes fun. But I think if we're trying to create the sort of fairest possible system. The integrity of the sport. Yes, Matt. Yeah, if we're going back to that, I do think there's just something about tennis that, to me, the beauty of it is you do get some people who can who can beat the top players but then they can't beat the people around them and that that that says as much about you as a player and i don't think you should necessarily earn more points just because you are beating those top players personally um yeah so i'm i'm i'm quite happy with the system we have now in that sense um but then i catch myself and i think you know when i'm thinking of players i probably do in my mind elevate players if they're able to beat those top players you know that that is something i take into account when when considering how good a player is in my mind it's just that i think in terms of the way tennis works the beauty of it is that every win is kind of worth the same and and you've And you've got to be able to beat the world number 74 after you've just beaten the world number three if you want to make that progress in the tournament.

1:00:06So that's kind of the side I come down on. But, you know, I do see that it's fun. And there's something to be said for that as well. I mean, Lance Tinge publishing his list was also fun. Right. It was definitely a sort of slow march away from fun. This is the story that we're telling. So, yeah, we had bonus points for a long time. And then for a long time, the ATP rankings used an average system. So tournament points would accrue, increasing in number with every round, just like we have now. but then they were divided your points were divided by the number of tournaments played with a minimum divisor of 12 and what this would mean is that you know players could simply overtake higher ranked opponents by playing more events the more tournaments the greater the divisor and workhorses felt penalised by the average system with its diminishing returns for increased play so basically the sort of weird thing here is that the average system was that it would reward players for competing less a career high ranking could be attained while out injured or on holiday and there's this case of Yannick Noah missing Wimbledon in 1986 with injury and rising to a career best ranking of number 3 instead of a divisor of 17 his points total was divided by 16 boosting his average and allowing him to overtake Boris Becker, who defended his Wimbledon title but didn't receive the ranking reward and was stuck at number four.

1:01:56So top players whose consistency ensured high averages from lean schedules, there was a dissentive to play more and risk diluting their average. So instead, the superstars of the sport were kind of lured to big money exhibitions instead. And also another sort of weird quirk of that was that it would discourage you from playing on anything other than your favourite surface. You know, you could just rack up the right number of events on your favourite surface. So, you know, I can kind of see why they started out with an average system that if you were devising something from scratch. Yeah, it's a total example of unintended consequences, I think.

1:02:39Like, I absolutely see why that felt like a good idea. but then once you see it play out in practice it's like oh god no obviously all these things that we don't want to happen are happening let's let's stop this so david take us through the 90s so right at the start of the 90s in 1990 the atp tour was formed um and addressed some of the ranking concerns because you know they were aware of this issue with the average system um and they wanted to get more players to to to compete and and be on their circuits um so they scrapped the average system they introduced what was called the best 14 system um where only a player's best 14 results from the previous 52 weeks counted towards the ranking so you could play more than than the 14 um and it would always include the sort of grand slams and the masters 1000s they were known as the super nines back in those days um but you could play loads loads more tournaments and just keep sort of replacing events within your ranking total so that you had your best 14 counting um the emphasis was was on on winning and and and you could get rid of the early loss in a tournament um it wouldn't be as as impactful in that way um weller evans was was a former tour manager and an executive director at the atp tour one of one of the people i i knew very well and he reckons that that heinz guntart the the guy who's now the swiss billy jean king captain and is also you'll hear him doing the interviews this week in stuttgart on court and former player former coach of steffy graff you know a huge figure in the sport he was familiar with down He's popping up.

1:04:33He was familiar with downhill skiing. One of the great moments of the Billy Dean King Cup with Matt Roberts as well, we may remember from the finals a few years ago. He came up in the last pod. He'll probably come up tomorrow somehow. I interviewed him during the pandemic when we were talking Steffi Graf. Speaking of someone who doesn't mince their words and is very direct and to the point, didn't he blank us in Paris? On the streets in Paris. He might not necessarily know what we look like. I think you know me just about. I'm not holding a grudge, but I think that is what happened. We did walk past him, yeah.

1:05:10He is literally everywhere. Yeah. The other issue, though, with, I mean, the problem is all these ranking systems do have a bit of an issue of their own. And I remember when I joined the tour, this was one of the talking points because they were using the best 14 at that time. And with only 14 events counting, players could discard these poor results. and it did mean that if you played loads and loads of tournaments you've almost got the opposite effect of the average system in a way um it's you know it's it's kind of promoting quantity over quality um and a lot of players a lot of top players didn't like this and i mean you know if you read hard courts the the john feinstein book it's all about how easy it was for players to accept guarantees um and and and that book written in 1990 would have been during the average system and you know even lendle i'm going to quote here always playing exhibitions on top of having a great ranking you know because he's he's performing so well at the ones he did play um and he he said we're the only sport lendle said where every game doesn't count you should not be allowed to have 15 lousy results and they don't count because you have 14 better ones uh andre agassi said to me the ranking system is like a professional golfer mulligans with you know you could hit a bad shot and say you know what let's just not count that one uh but we'll we'll count it if you hit a better one um so you know as you can see not everybody happy with this um too much quantity over quality um Stefan Edberg was the uh was the year-end number one despite losing first round at both the French and US Opens um and basically the the surface specialists were able to sort of bump up their ranking points on their preferred courts and I mean for for a long time you know clay court specialists just wouldn't play Wimbledon um and or just hate it um you know We'll go on to talk about that in a moment as well.

1:07:16But there was a good sort of argument brewing between the American players and Thomas Muster when Muster got to world number one. He was doing it in 1996 based on the most astonishing results on clay. He won 12 events in 1995. 11 of them were on clay. And Pete Sampras was asked about this by the LA Times. He says, I feel that Thomas is the best player in the world on clay. As far as him being the best player, I don't quite swallow that. Must have said, this is the system. It's not like I'm buying the points at a supermarket. So you've got all this going on. And at the same time, Catherine, you've got Wimbledon, who's just kind of sort of opting out of all of that for its own seedlings, which I love.

1:08:10Do you? I loved it back then. Sorry, I forget. You're not into the integrity of the sport in the way that I am, David. I mean, back then, I would probably be partially as up in arms and as everybody else, but also secretly thinking, well, yeah, absolutely, whoever it might be, Stefan Edberg should be ranked higher than Thomas Muster on grass because Muster's crap on grass. Why is he the top seed? I think the issue with viewing it that way is that it was only Wimbledon. If Roland Garros were reciprocating and downgrading, I mean, I guess they weren't really grass court specialists by the end of this era or not so many, but if they were downgrading Tim Hennman's seeding reciprocally, then maybe it would have felt like a fairer-ish or a version of a fairer system.

1:09:09But I mean, I remember just about the time, the end of the era when Wimbledon used to do this. And I viewed it purely through a Tim Henman lens. To me, this was just the mechanism through which they artificially inflated Tim Henman's seating at Wimbledon every year. Because, look, if you didn't know, while all the slams, including Wimbledon, used the rankings to decide who entered the tournaments, the French, only the Australian French and the US Open used them to determine all the seedings. Wimbledon would almost go back to the days of Lance Tingay, quite frankly. They just had a committee. They had a group of, I'm going to assume men, Wimbledon committee members who just sat down, had a chat and decided who the 16 seeds should be.

1:10:03changing the order of the rankings sometimes quite dramatically to factor in prowess on grass and that was one of the many reasons that clay court specialists would say that grass is for cows and often led to them withdrawing from Wimbledon because they felt disrespected having seen their well-earned rankings disregarded when it came to seeding. Wimbledon seeding's formula continued until pretty recently and for the 2021 edition of the tournament the men's seeds were based entirely on ranking. I can't believe it was that recent David. 2021 Is that right? Is it really? Yeah They changed the Yeah they didn't do it with this committee they changed the committee they didn't do the committee thing They had a formula Yeah, there was a formula.

1:10:59Yeah, they had a formula. So there was less movement for a number of years, but they were still changing it. Yeah, and it was only after the pandemic. There was also some reform to the ATP rankings in 2000. Things changed then to correct the quantity over quality bias of the rankings and to also give the grand slams their due by compulsory inclusion of results from the majors and the Master Series, which were at the time known as Premier Events, in a mandatory 13 system. A, quote, best five component remained as an incentive for more play in smaller events. So this remains essentially the ranking system that we have today with a best seven component, extending the total events counted to 19, 20 for the elite eight who contest the ATP final.

1:11:54So while not every result counts, all the top level events do. So all of the slams and all of the Masters 1000 events, including the ATP finals, if you are lucky enough to be playing the ATP finals. There was also, though, in 2000, a sort of an optics, a PR adjustment to the rankings, David. There was a change in how they were advertised publicly. In 1999, five men, Pete Sampras, Carlos Moyer, Evgeny Kafelnikov, Andre Agassi and Patrick Rafter, all reached number one. riveting alpha male showdown or revolving door in the penthouse the best 14 system had cheapened the feat of reaching number one if the top ranking can change hands eight times in a season is it such a singular achievement

1:12:55good question and and it was it was something did you remember that yeah oh yeah it was it was it was this feeling that kind of anybody can be world number one, that there isn't really a world number one. There isn't a, the top two players in the world felt like Pete Sampras and Andragosy because that was the rivalry of the time and had been for several years. But on the rankings, Carlos Moyer had his moment. Yevgeny Kofelnikov, as I'll go on to talk about, had his moment. Pat Rafter, I think, I think reached world number one for one or two weeks. That's it. And listen, they all deserved it. And that's just the way it was.

1:13:32But it kind of wasn't a great look in some ways at the time because it didn't feel like there were dominant players. And the big problem was the way the rankings worked and the way they were publicly being shown is that you could have these weird changes in your ranking that seemed counterintuitive to the results you were getting at the time because there were 52-week rankings. the classic example was Yevgeny Kafelnikov and I remember being in Prague the day that he became world number one I was the communication manager at the time and he had lost in the first round in Prague and straight after that loss when the rankings were published the next week he became world number one and that was his sixth consecutive first round loss and yet that run had culminated with him becoming world number one and that's because he'd done so well in the the sort of 44 other weeks that had led up to that including winning the australian open and he'd he'd done brilliantly but suddenly he'd been on this terrible run and yet he'd still gone to world number one and at this time and it wasn't the reason that they they changed the focus and the marketing of it all, but it was used by people like me as a great example.

1:14:57I would argue with Richard Evans, this is why we need to have this change. And what the change was, was to go to a kind of Formula One style race to a year end number one, starting at zero and ending up with the world number one of the year. It was called the ATP Champions Race. and effectively the problem with it was I liked the idea because it meant that you would just accumulate your points like you do in the race to Turin and if you won a tournament you would go up in the race and towards the year end number one ranking but the problem was you still needed the ranking system as it was in order to enter players into tournaments but because the ATP didn't want people focusing on that they wanted people focusing on the race they hid the rankings they renamed the rankings the entry system so a player would have his race position and he would also have his esp his entry system position really rolls off the tongue doesn't it really catchy and people like richard evans would would call them up and they'd say why in the in my international tennis weekly in my itw this this bible of the sport what why is the ranking system not being published anymore because that's what was happening they wanted everybody to focus on the champions race so they only published that and yet there were all these stories that people wanted to keep on top of based on the 52 week ranking that they knew was being calculated and was being hidden by the atp and so what you would get is situations like at the start of 2000 fabri santoro won doha and was leading the race and some some publications were saying he is the world number one no he's not he's just won the first tournament of the year um and so you know there was there was great consternation about this and actually i've dug out two of the media guides um from 2000 and 2001 from when i was working there a couple of bad hairstyles i've had there um but the the descriptions of the champions race and if you if you look up that year of 2000 it was the year that marit safin won the us open beating pete samberson so safin arrives and he's chasing down the world number one ranking it's just that nobody was promoting it nobody was talking about it the ATP at all and we got to Lisbon where the where the end of year finals was they were rotating it around the globe and it was the year that Lisbon had it and it was this amazing sort of tournament full of different storylines because you have Gustavo Curtin he he he was in the tournament huge name right up there in the rankings you got Sampras and Agassi who both reached the semi-finals but Safin only needed to win a couple of matches to to get to world number one on the traditional 52 week ranking and he did it and nobody talked about it nobody celebrated it it wasn't marked by the atp it was reported by some news outlets like richards and le keep and people like that but if you ask the atp well is he world number one they'd say no no the world number one is crowned at the end of the year so they were everybody in that i was working with we were all praying that safin won the tournament and therefore finished the year world number one and then could be kind of crowned in the way that we wanted him to be crowned but he lost and then gustavo curtain went and beat back to back sampras and agassi won the tournament and he finished the year as world number one winning the champions race so Safin never really got his moment and that was that was a really contentious moment because if you google Marit Safin it'll say that he he had nine weeks at world number one which were at the end of 2000 and and during early 2001 but if you read the 2001 media guide it talks exclusively about Gustavo Kürten being the 2000 number one player in the world and it doesn't promote or mention the fact that Safin ever got there, which was really contentious.

1:19:26And that system only lasted a couple of years and then they went back to using it as a way to promote the race to the year-end finals and they reintroduced the rankings as the focus point. Fascinating. Absolutely fascinating. But at least he didn't get his moment in the sun at the time. And what an open goal missed by the ATP for someone as young and exciting as Marit Safin reaching number one and for that not to be splashed everywhere that they possibly could. But at least the history books reflect the truth of Marit Safin having been world number one. But that was not the case for very famously Guillermo Villas.

1:20:16Now, he is, when you talk about the history of the rankings, he is a name that pops immediately to mind. One of the most sort of controversial cases over the years, there was also a famous case of Yvonne Goulagon. Let's hear from Steve Flink again on these key moments in the history of the rankings. You may have heard how Velas, in recent years, he was very disturbed because he thought somewhere in 1975 he had been ranked one. The ATP didn't always release it every week. Sometimes it would be every two weeks. Maybe some of those rankings got lost in the shovel. It's hard to understand why it happened.

1:20:56But he's convinced he was number one. And I think he might have spoken to Tyriak about it as manager at the time. And maybe they should have pushed it harder at the time to make sure that for history he was given that honor because he's not included among the number ones. And the ATP was recently there was a big push. And I think their stance was we can't rewrite history. This is how it was. We're not going to go back, which I think was too bad because there was a comparable instance for the women where Yvonne Gouligan briefly in 76, which is one of her best years, where she lost to Chris Everett in the finals of Wimbledon in the Open.

1:21:31But during the indoor circuit that year, she was the best player on the indoor circuit and won the Virginia Slims championships in L.A. over Chrissy. Yvonne got to number one in that period. The WTA somehow lost it in their records. John Dolan, who I think you know well, is this historian and former WTA employee, went back and dug it. He was a great historian himself. He went back and dug through their records and all their computer and found it and found the evidence that Yvonne indeed had been number one. and they did change it for history. And it meant a lot to Gulag. I remember interviewing her in 2009.

1:22:07He found that in 2007. So it was over 30 years after the fact. And finally, history came round to her or she was given the honor she deserved. And Yvonne wasn't known as sort of a fiercely competitive person. But when I spoke to her about it, it was clear to me how much it meant to her. and she knew she'd earned it and she didn't want that lost. And thanks to Dolan, it was not. But there was a case where the WTA and ATP didn't look at it the same way. I thought the ATP should have put Greg Charcot on the project. And I bet you Greg would have dug it out. I bet you he somehow would have found it in the archives.

1:22:47And then Velas would have had this. And the aside to that is that Velas, in 1977, it was 75 that he should have first been number one 77 he had that great year he won the french he won wimbledon he won the french he won the u.s open two majors over 40 matches in a row across the summer and somehow uh it did jimmy and connor still with the consistency ended up number one uh on the computer but at world tennis magazine where we had the masters at the end of the year in new york where our offices were And we had worked it out that if Velas did, depending on how he fared at the Masters and how Borg, we thought Borg really, to us it was between Borg and Velas, not Connors.

1:23:33Connors won the tournament. He beat Borg in the final. And so in the end, it worked out that we put Velas at number one in the world. We had a T-shirt made. We went to his hotel and did a photography session, put him on the cover of the magazine. And I know that he kept that. It was still in his memorabilia not too long ago because I saw some photos of it and some footage. And so I know how much that meant to him at the time, too, that our magazine gave him number one. And and that's why the computer thing, I think, stuck in his craw a bit that he was never, you know, they never did him justice that way.

1:24:10But, you know, those were interesting times. Another funny story is a friend of mine, this was in the 75 period, a period of 75, 76. But a friend of mine who actually did follow those rankings very closely, he would look at the list whenever they came out. He he determined that the ATP had made a mistake on Ken Rosewall. The Ken, instead of being number six, should have been number five or four. and he called the offices and spoke to the guy that was in charge of of the computer and made his case and the guy went called him back and said you're right we're going to fix it they had left out they somehow they had left out some of one of ken's results or one of his tournaments and and they corrected it so those kinds of things you had those things happen in the early years and that's why i was on the gulagang matter and now and and this thing with Rosewall and the Villas mistake thing.

1:25:05Obviously over time, that never happened again, but these were interesting stories surrounding the rankings. The bottom line is I think it always meant a lot to the players, particularly the number one honor. That's what meant the most. I don't think too many of them lost sleep about why wasn't I three instead of four. But when it was number one, it was Paramount. And that case of Guillermo Villas and the ATP refusing to, quote, rewrite history and refusing to enlist the help of Greg Charcot, who I totally agree with Steve. He would have sorted it out, wouldn't he, David? That case is the subject of a Netflix documentary called Guillermo Villas settling the score.

1:25:55and it is it's the most famous one David for for a reason yeah and I think it's a reminder of just how valuable the ranking is and was to people and I think that that has remained I think that that is the great success story of of the ranking system that they've developed in in the sort of computer era um and and i i i'm sad i'm sad for guillermo in that regard um i'm also sad for some some of the players who didn't quite make it you know who who looked like they were going to um that there's there's some some great moments that matt and i have been remembering so and and and some where players did and it made their career i mean marcelo rios you know he might have been on the front cover of Sports Illustrated and headlined the most hated man in tennis at the same time as he did this.

1:26:54But he got to world number one despite never winning a Grand Slam title. And in 1998, he lost, he got absolutely thumped by Peter Corder in the Australian Open final. But then he went on an absolute heater and he won Indian Wells and he won Miami. And by the time he was crowned champion by beating Andre Agassi in the final in Miami, the whole stadium was up knowing full of Chilean fans knowing that he'd just become world number one and he walked around that court with a Chilean flag over his shoulders and he got given the most incredible reception when he went back home and you know he never managed to sort of build on on that form unfortunately and yet it was the most magical period and it culminated in him getting to world number one and um and the guy who'd beaten him in in in that australian open final peter korda i remember in sort of second or third week of my career at the atp there was a tournament in london in battersea park uh in a tent um in a big top tent amazing thing where the wind would make it sound so glamorous david yeah the wind would blow and the sort of the the foundation the structure would start bending you know down on top of you you start to think is this place coming down but anyway Peter Corder only needed to win one more match to reach world number one at that time and that was the case for two or three weeks on the tour around then and he never quite managed it um and his his case is kind of sad and disappointing in that he then tested later in the year for Nandrolone and eventually kind of retired a year or so later um but and he wasn't the only one who got really, really close, big players with grand sum titles who never quite made it to world number one.

1:28:46Some of these I'd forgotten. Agnieszka Radvanska was a match away from world number one. If she'd won that Wimbledon final in 2012 against Serena Williams, went to a third set. So she was only a set away. I love match away from world number one. I feel like we could do a show, a relived show on one match from world number one. I mean, you're going to talk us through it now, but some on these lists, even quite recent ones, are kind of making my jaw drop to the floor. Yeah, like the one I remember most clearly out of these recent ones is Kasper Rude, 2022 US Open final. I remember that being such a talking point.

1:29:25Winner of Rude Alcaraz is going to be world number one. And at the time it felt like Rude, world number one, like what? But now it feels even more like that, I think. But, you know, he played a good final there. It was a good match against Carlos Salkraz. And had he won it, you know, it would have been kind of a crowning achievement. The thing I forgot was the next slam, the Australian Open of 2023. World number one is on the line again. And it's Stefanos Tsitsipas. If Tsitsipas beats Novak Djokovic in that Australian Open final, he would have become world number one, which, you know, I think the rankings at that time were weird weren't they coming out of the pandemic we'd had the rankings freeze during the pandemic we'd had no ranking points awarded at Wimbledon by the ATP and WTA in in 2022 because of the ban on on Russian and Belarusian players like it was a slightly odd time and look Sitsapas was a very different prospect to to what he is now um but still I I don't remember it I don't remember talking about the chance of Sitsapas to become world number one and like to me the 2023 Australian Open you say that doesn't feel that long ago but if you if you frame it in terms of Sitsapas having a chance to get to world number one it feels like it feels like a different lifetime ago like yeah crazy um the another one I remember is Petra Kvitova uh who was who was twice a match away from world number one in fact twice a set away from world number one for the first time in 2012 uh she would have got to world number one if she'd beaten lena in the sydney final of 2012 and she lost that in in three sets and then kind of in like the second phase of her career really after after the attack in in her home when she returned remarkably getting to another the Grandstand Final, 2019 Australian Open Final, and again, right there, she's a match away from world number one.

1:31:33I believe that match was for the world number one ranking because Osaka ended up becoming the world number one after that Australian Open Final, winning it in three sets. But had Kvitova won it, she would have become the world number one as well. So just so close there on two occasions for Petra Kvitova. And yeah, with her CV and the sport and a couple of Wimbledon titles and just so many titles on the WTA tour generally, it's something that she just narrowly missed out on. And I think, you know, probably would have been a deserving world number one at some point in history. And then the other one, David, is Michael Chang, who we think would have been number one in 1996.

1:32:19And this is interesting because it's one match away, but it's not his match. It's like his fate is in the hands of Alex Correcha here. Alex Correcha plays this epic quarterfinal at the US Open against Pete Sampras, has a match point, does Correcha, doesn't win it. Had he won it, then Michael Chang would have become world number one. But what happens is Sampras saves the match point and then goes on to beat Chang in the final and Chang never gets his world number one spot. I know, David, as soon as I mention this to you, you then made it your mission to go out and watch the highlights read the transcripts and live in the 90s for a bit yeah it is amazing i mean pete sampras i didn't realize and the that match if you if you search the name of coretcha on google the first thing that comes up is coretcha sampras 1996 um because how close it was how big a name sampras was and the fact that sampras was being sick at the back of the court in the tie break in the final set tie break i mean he's vomiting in the back of the court hunched over with stomach cramps dehydrated um and hit and and he sort of he rolls the first serve over at 80 miles an hour because he just can't extend up this is about five all in the tie break and then his second serve he manages to really hook it and do an ace out wide and it's just the crowd going absolutely wild Coretcha looks just crushed at the end and Coretcha in classic sort of amiable style in his press conference is just making everybody laugh at the the sort of devastation but also the comedy of it all that he he he just can't understand how he's not beating this guy he said But I just could, in the moment, I couldn't really play my normal game.

1:34:13You know, when anybody ever says playing an injured opponent is tough, I mean, Coretcha just verbalizes that for you. And there's Chang just making his way through the draw, beats Agassi in the semis. Agassi's having a bit of a meltdown, really, at the time. And then they meet in the final. And, yeah, I mean, Chang could have been number one at the end of that tournament. if only Carrecha had got the job done. And then Sampras has an IV, recovers, beats Goran in the semis, plays Chang in the final and absolutely destroys him.

1:34:50Yeah, that one match away but not being in his hands is so fascinating. And yeah, just while we're on number one, I just thought interesting moment actually in tennis history. 29 men and 29 women who've been ranked number one according to the official ATP and WTA rankings and all of all of those men and women still alive. What I find interesting about that, the same number. OK, the WTA rankings have been going for a couple of years less, but it does, I think, tell you that I think because there was this era on the WTA tour where the number one was changing a lot, you know, in the sort of 2008, 2012 sort of period.

1:35:38And you had some players who got to number one without winning a major, Jankovic, Safina, Pliskova a little bit later as well. Wozniacki spent 67 weeks ranked number one in that 2010-2012 period without a major. She would obviously go on to win one and get world number one again. Halep was a majorless world number one the first time she got there before going on to get her major in 2018 and then another one in 2019. But I think, to me, that era has stuck in the minds of so many people. and they use it as a bit of a stick to beat women's tennis with like oh number one's changing hands all the time there's no dominance all that kind of thing but actually the numbers there 29 men and 29 women there's been the same throughout history and we've had periods in the women's game with Navratilova and Ever and Graf where we've had dominant world number ones and we've got it now as well you know the world number one has not changed that much in the last four or five years It's just been a tussle between Chiantic and Sabalenka.

1:36:47But I do think that that period that I'm talking about there with your Yankovic and your Saffrona, of course, there's that famous Serena quote about Rome and Madrid. And, you know, she would rather be number two. Matthew plays us every Wimbledon. Right. You know, like that has stuck in the minds, I think, of so many people. But, you know, I think it's zooming out, taking a look at the tennis history there. 29 men, 29 women. And there's that there's that kind of balance to it, which I which I really like. You've got the I mean, there's things like how extraordinarily recent it was that the WTA introduced any kind of rankings protection for maternity leave.

1:37:31And, you know, it's been extended from its first iteration. Thank goodness. But what a ride. What a ride the rankings have been. And it's not over yet, folks, because we have decided to finish today's show by dry running my proposal from earlier in the show that we we bring back. we reinstate ourselves as the honorary Lance Tingays of tennis and produce our own top 10 rankings for the ATP and WTA as though it's the end of the season and we're publishing our lists. That's the only brief we've been given by Matt for this little segment I suspect we've all interpreted that brief very different I had a total crisis when doing this Don't know about you, David.

1:38:28David loved it. Yeah, I bet he did. Yeah. I feel like, should we end on David's? I feel like that's going to be the high that this show deserves to end on. Matt, why don't you go first with your ATP rankings? Let's go ATP each and then WTA each. So just to confirm, at the time of recording, the ATP top 10 rankings look like this. Sinner, Alcaraz, Zverev, Djokovic, Felix Augerliassime, Shelton, Dominoor, Fritz, Musetti, Medvedev. Matt, what are yours? Do you want me to go 10 to 1 or 1 to 10? 1 to 10. OK. 1, I have Carlos Alcaraz. Thought you might, yeah. Which, you know, I don't think that controversial, considering he was world number one last week.

1:39:21Anti-Sinner. Anti-Sinna, you guys. Yeah, obviously it's my hating Sinna agenda. The thing is, I think Sinna would take Alcaraz's last year, you know, winning those majors. So I've got Alcaraz as one, Sinna as two. I've got Novak Djokovic at number three. So I've bumped him up a place there. And I've got Zverev at four. I've then got Mazzetti at five I think he was number five again just a week or so ago he's lost that ranking recently because of being out injured for the benefit of the tape David is eye rolling yeah I've got Mazzetti at five the Djokovic you know performance in Australia his clay season last year he started performing on hard courts at the majors we know he can play on grass i think there's not much to choose between a lot of these next guys and so i've just leaned mazzetti there at five um i've gone taylor fritz at six um again that is that is largely based on body of work over the last year i'm giving him credit for you know for the ways battled in the last year not you know okay if we're if we're literally basing on the last week or two weeks then he'd be lower down but I'm giving him some credit there for body of work this is a tricky one because the last time I saw him play lost six love six love but I have gone Daniil Medvedev at number seven um horrible record at slams in that time like really horrible which is working against him but the level he produced at indian wells makes has is doing a lot of work there and as i said in this in this grouping i don't think there's much between them and he's he's got a win over carlos alcaraz very very recently that that's counting a lot for me there uh not much between the next two i've got dimanore eight and Shelton nine couldn't really separate them Shelton shows up at the slams but Dimonor I just think I'm rewarding his sort of week in week out consistency there and just nudging him up so that's that's nine of the current top 10 are listed there unfortunately I have a raised number five Felix Auger from my top ten entirely I just think too much of that for me is is indoor tennis and that end of season swing US Open semi-final US Open semi-final it's big it's you know he might be 11 but he's not in my top ten bonus points for Mervyn Evry beating the world number one bonus points that you don't agree with David you are not going to like my list um lance tingay used to publish his his rankings after the u.s open you know he would he would not even bother about the period after the u.s open so i'm leaning i'm leaning into that a little bit here um who have you got matt is it i've got feasts i've got artifice okay which is which is Our lists are quite similar.

1:42:51Very much based on, you know, the boost, the turbo charge, the vibes, the potential. I realise that that isn't, there's not a lot of maths going into that, but, you know. Well, we've got the maths. The ATP is doing the maths. This is not that. And he's low down, isn't he? But that is so injury-related. Absolutely. Injury related. I decided to do this on the basis of if there was a Grand Slam held tomorrow and it's miraculously on every player's favourite surface. It's a magical Grand Slam where everybody is playing on their favourite surface. And everyone's fit. The fitness thing was like, for example, I haven't got Jack Draper because I don't trust that his body is going to keep him fit.

1:43:41Whereas I have more faith in artifice. I have elevated artifice. Spoiler alert, because I have more confidence in his body. But obviously, if you told me Jack Draper's going to be fit forever, I'd probably have him in it. But I don't trust that. So kind of. It's tricky, isn't it? Very tricky. And if you discount fitness, then you're kind of like, Djokovic is number one, isn't he? like aging is a form of form of fitness I suppose anyway that is how I decided to do this I decided to do this about kind of considering what would be my mix order if there were a grand slam held tomorrow so I I think I've rewarded consistency less here in fact I know I have I think I've favored I've given more weight to who I would back in a in a fangy chips down situation rather than looking at the body of 12 months of work because the computer system is already doing that for me.

1:44:44Where's the fun in that? Okay, so my list is as follows in order from one to 10. Carlos Alcaraz, number one. Shocking. Yannick Sinner, number two. Novak Djokovic, number three. Daniel Medvedev, whose most recent match was a six love, six love defeat, number four. He's been there and done it, hasn't he? He's won a slam. He's been to number one. Alexander Zverev, number five. Ben Shelton, number six. Lorenzo Musetti. Hang on, have I lost count here? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Oh my God, there's only nine players on my list. Ben Shelton. I can add one. Turns out there is room for Alex de Mino.

1:45:33Ben Shelton, number six. Lorenzo Musetti, number seven. Art of Feast, number eight Taylor Fritz, number nine and Alex de Menor, number ten Come for me, Canadians There you go There's my list David, over to you I've got the same I felt seven was a bit high Yeah, it is He's number nine I've got the same top four as Mataz I've elevated Djokovic above Zverev. And then I've got Ogi Aliassime, because some of us don't discount US Open semifinals. I've got Ben Shelton, Alex Diminor, Mazzetti at eight, Medvedev at nine. I've completely ditched Taylor Fritz. Mazzetti's a French Open semifinalist. That's in the last 12 months.

1:46:31So if it's about Slam semifinals. Yeah, but that's significantly lower than Felix. Felix? Well, you know, he's done square root of nothing for the past hour of a man in months. And Medvedev's nine and Fils is ten. And Fritz, you're out of my fancy team, you're out of my top ten. Yeah, well, fitness is a problem for Fritz, isn't it? He is falling apart a bit. Yeah, OK. Yeah, we've all got Artifis in there. Yeah. Yeah. Not at all by this. Of course, we're all doing more recency, but the thing with the rankings is that they don't do recency bias, whereas humans do. And I'm okay with that. Especially these ones.

1:47:18Yeah. On to the women, Matt. Yeah, do you want to read out the current top 10? Yes. Current top 10 is Irina Sabalenka at one, then Rabatkinner, Goff, Svjantek, Pagula, Anisimova Svitolina Paolini Andrava and Mboko now let's off we go all of us with underestimating Jasmine Paolini Matt you first okay I have the same one and two as the official rankings I have Sabalenka and Rabatkinna I found the order of the next three really really hard I've got the same three players, but I have changed the order. I've got Igor Sviante at number three.

1:48:12Wimbledon, you know, again, going back to Lance Tingay. You win Wimbledon. That's pretty big. That's doing a lot for me. Bonus points for beating Inissim over, love and love. And look, she's in a slump. We know that, but I think really putting her at three is kind of a sign of the slump. Because actually, I think over the last few years, she had definitely been in that top two. So I'm putting her three. I've actually gone Pergoula over Gough right now at four over five. And I know Gough's got a major in the last 12 months and Pergoula doesn't. But right now, I think Pagula is a better tennis player right now.

1:49:01I feel more secure about her game. I know we're going into the clay court season and probably Goff would be the one. But, you know, this is the end of the season. I just think Pagula is a little bit above Goff right now. A couple of semifinals at the last two majors as well for her. I've got Amanda Nisimova at six in her ranking position. don't need to say any more on that 6 is a great spot I think for Amanda Nisimova this is where my biggest rejig comes I've taken someone from outside the top 10 and put them at number 7 and that is Karolina Mukova is going in that slot for me just not having bad losses really it's taking the very best players in the world to beat her so I've put her at 7 I've put Svitolina at 8 I know she's got that ceiling on her game, but I am rewarding there her consistency, quarters, semis, slams.

1:50:00It's one place lower than her official ranking, but I just didn't want to underestimate Svitolina. I've got her in there. And then I've swapped round Mboko and Andreeva, and I've got Mboko. So you've got no issues underestimating Paolini there? Paolini, totally out. out and honestly honestly i think it's yeah i don't feel bad about it i don't feel bad about it the start of the year she's had she's not had a good major record in the last 12 months i'm sorry but paulini's out and bokeh's nine and andreva's 10 for me well i i've used the same formula as i did for the men's grand slam tomorrow order of my mix everyone's playing on their favorite surfers and my my list is remarkably similar to yours matt so i have sabalenka at one robachner at two i also elevated shontek to three um i put goff ahead of pagula i've got goff at four similar reasoning to the medvedev thing been there been there done it like i'm thinking grand slam mix i think i'll always just feel that way about goff at slam somehow then i have pagula then I have Mboko because I think we're now into the territory of players that haven't won a slam and right at this moment I could imagine Mboko just going and doing something wild then I've got Anisimova I felt a bit bad I know but she's she's coachless and having a bit of a tough time I still back her I think she is going to win a slam eventually Well, she hasn't done it.

1:51:44She lost love and love. She's done more than Mboko. She's still at number eight. Everyone keeps bringing up the love and love. What about the perfectly respectable US Open final, Sharon? I believe she's going to win a slam. Right at this moment, she's at number eight. Eight is fine. She's doing fine. Get a coach, Amanda. Number nine is Andreeva. And I, too, have snuck Karolina Mukova into my list at ten. Have you got enough players there? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Oh, I've done nine again. Yeah, I thought you had. It's good, Catherine, you get to just massage somebody back in who you've just ditched.

1:52:24Who have I forgotten? Who did you have on that I haven't got? Svitolina. Yeah, that's the consistency though, isn't it? Maybe Bencic? Yeah, I thought about Bencic. Yeah, I'm going to have Bencic. There you go. at 10. Oh, my God. Yeah. But we know that, really, she's discarded. Yeah. She's brilliant at mixes, not so good at counting to 10. David, what have you got? Finish on a high for us. Well, rankings one through seven are exactly the same as the official rankings. Are they? Sabalenka, Rebecca, Nagoff, Sviantek, Pegula, and Isimovic, Vitalina. I don't think anybody reasonably... That's all the way down to Paolini, David.

1:53:12can argue with any of those. I'm afraid that Paolini is not in the 10 at all. Eight is Mboko. I've elevated Mboko by two places. Ten is Andreeva, and I have a wild card at nine. I have Jung Chin Wen at number nine. Oh, yeah. To be fair, I hovered over her. I just feel like she is a top 10 player minimum who's just been injured. but she's injured again kind of like the kind of like the fees argument I suppose so you have confidence that she will be she'll get a clean bill of health in a way that we're perhaps not confident in Draper she's just injured and I'm hopeful that the injury is all she's not old she's just injured put that on a t-shirt anyone else is that 10?

1:54:08yeah yeah that's who was your number 7? Sorry, who was your number eight, David? Bambouka. That's where Zheung is. Zheung. Bambouka. Bambouka. Eight is Bambouka. Zheung, nine. Nine. And Andreev. And Andreev. Okay. Muka. Fun? I love Muka, but come on.

1:54:30Don't bite. What do you mean, come on? I mean, she's not as good as the others at the moment. David I mean literally just beat Mboko in a final yeah but I mean like she hasn't I'm not having that let the record show that I consider that comment to be bollocks and won Olympic gold yeah like Jung is an interesting pitch Jung's interesting but I'm not I'm not here for the for the Mook of a slander in that Catherine's put Mook of a below Svitolina ahead of Svitolina I told you my system yeah I have as well I can't believe we're ending this beautiful show on Mukhaverslander you were supposed to bring us out on a high David now I'm annoyed with you I'm bringing you out on a on a tasty morsel of conversation but it tastes bitter in my mouth I know good it's been a good show though Competing lists.

1:55:40Yeah. Yeah, this has been great, Matt. Thank you so much, as always, for your excellent work. Thank you, Steve Flink, not only for your contribution to this show, but for giving us the idea for this show. I don't think we'd be doing it if it wasn't for that fortuitous conversation with Steve Flink. So what a guy. Thank you. And thank you to Richard Evans as well, who, as I say, is always so generous with us and with these shows. Thank you, David, for doing those interviews. David and his little black book. Yeah. And thank you, David, for working at the ATP. Yeah, absolutely. What a rich source of stories and information that time is.

1:56:26Incredible. A goldmine. And thank you to the Wimbledon Library, of course, and to Robert McNichol, the Wimbledon historian. And this is pod number two of a three pod week. If you're listening to this soon after it comes out, Matt and I will be back tomorrow to talk about Stuttgart and Barcelona and Munich and Rouen. Don't worry, Matt, I haven't written any quizzes for this show. You have to eye roll me and sass me about my questions. And I've thought of a quiz for you two, actually. I'm going to roll that out one show. OK. you're right David he wants to be the quiz master he's not comfortable being the quiz I do like being the quiz master but look I performed alright you performed great but just in the edit it wasn't until the edit that I realised how much sass there was from you about my questions doing it again now Catherine name the number of non-Spanish people like what a silly question the number of Spanish people I thought you'd like that Spain question I got that one better you did David plucking a number out of thin air our next edition of Tennis Relived is coming out before Roland Garros and it will have a little Roland Garros flavour to it as always and of course a whole archive of Relived shows and bonus shows for friends if you haven't heard them or if you just want to listen to them again they are all there for you to check out whenever you like.

1:58:01That is one of the perks of being a friend of the Tennis Podcast and we're very grateful that you are because it enables us to produce shows like this and learn more about the sport that we love. So it's been really fun. We hope you've enjoyed the ride as well and we'll speak to you all very soon indeed.