Yes, you guessed right from my clever title--it is here that I will begin the dreaded breakdown of prize money, points and ranking. Let’s start with a little info on how the ranking system works.
The WTA rankings run on a 365 day cycle and the points are cleared off 365 days later constantly, from whatever tournament you have played. You are entered into tournaments based on your ranking, the higher ranked players get in before the lower ranked players. In each tournament you either get/do not get points based on how you finish at that tournament. As an example, the points of the ITF Circuit go a little like this:
for a 10K the winner gets 12 points, for a 25K they get 50 points, for a 50K 70 points, 75K 110 points, and 100K 140 points.
What the WTA does then is they count a certain number of your best tournaments towards your ranking—so to some extent it’s not like the more you play the more points you will get. In doubles I believe they count your best 11 tournaments towards your ranking and in singles it’s perhaps the top 16-18 tournaments that they count towards your ranking-for my purposes the exact numbers don’t matter as much as the principle.
Let’s show an imaginary player’s tournament finishes from 20 tournaments they played in one year --and let’s say they are good.
Here are their results and their matches won/played, points and prize money earned if they:
Won two 50K’s (5 matches, 70 points, $7315 each=$14,630)
Semi-finaled in three 50K’s (4 matches played, 32 points, $2185 each=$6555)
Quarterfinaled in two 50K’s (2 matches, 18 points, $1235 each=$2,475)
Finaled in one 100K (5 matches played, 100 points, $15,200)
Semi-finaled in two 100K’s (3 matches, 70 points, $4433 each=$8866)
Won one round in two 100K’s (one match, 18 points, $1520 each=$3040)
Won one round of qualifying in each of two Grand Slams (one match, 40 points, $5625 each=$11,250)
Reached the final round of qualifying in the other Grand Slam (3 matches, 50 points, $8,000)
Quarterfinaled in all four 25K’s (2 matches 14 points $686 each=$2,744)
Reached finals of a 10K (8 points $980).
Which are their top 16 tournaments in terms of points earned? They have one 100 pointer, four 70 pointers, one 50 pointer, two 40 pointers, three 32 pointers, three 18 points, four 14 pointers and one 8 pointer going down the list from highest to lowest. Now remember we can only take their highest 16 showings, so which tournaments get dropped off from the list? We have to take off their 8 pointer (finalist in 10K equals 4 matches won) and three of the 14 pointers (quarterfinals in 25K’s, equals two matches won).
This leaves us with a point total of 674 which would put this player at approximately 110 or 120 in the world singles rankings currently.
What would we expect their singles prize money to be? Given this tournament results layout, it comes out to approximately $73,735. At this level a player is probably not paying for their clothing, equipment, or hotel at the Grand Slams. But they are paying for their flights, many times their food at tournaments (not at WTA’s but at ITF Circuit events), probably health insurance and whatever other living expenses, depending on the person and the situation. They could be paying for a coach and a training situation when they are not away at tournaments (coaches-cheap ones-charge about 300-500 per week if you share them with another player, if not it’s usually $1,000 a week). Many players ranked that high make at least twice that amount because they also play doubles, but some don’t play doubles and for simplicity I have not included doubles points or prize money.
Lots of people look at the prize money and say, ‘Wow, they can make $15,000 in one week!’ But they don’t look at the expenses involved in getting that money. A one way ticket from Spain to, say, London is probably going to be at least $300-600 and once you are done with the tournament you have to then buy another one-way to wherever you are going next. If you stay in a hotel alone you have to pay at least $100 a night (if the hotel has an incredible tournament rate) and if you are there long enough to win the tournament that is seven nights which equals $700 gone.
So really in one week of expenses a player can put down $1300 just to get there and sleep somewhere at night—I didn’t even count food, coach, stringing or massage expenses. And that is every week you play in a tournament, so however many tournaments you play you can simply deduct $1300 times that number from how much a player earns in prize money. This is why the higher ranked players depend mostly on their endorsement opportunities and earnings for the big bucks-especially if you are ranked from 50-150 in the world.
As an athlete you simply cannot physically play a tournament every week and earn $15,800 every week. Athletic events require a certain amount of rest and recovery. This is the reality of playing professional tennis and the prize money figures come directly from the ITF and WTA websites.
Now let’s delve into this ranking system a bit so you can see what it all means apart from just the numbers and the gross prize money. Are we having fun yet?? I hope you are.
Let’s call our imaginary player Bertha Slammit. Bertha played 20 tournaments, and her lowest point value from the 16th tournament counting towards her ranking is 14 points. So in order for her to increase her ranking she has to get a result better than her last highest tournament result. This value was 14 points, so this means she could win an entire 10K tournament without her ranking moving a peep. She could win a round in a 50K and her ranking still wouldn’t change.
She needs to get to the semifinals of another 50, win a first round in a WTA or two rounds in a 100K to get 20 more points (the results has to EXCEED her lowest result by that many points in order to move UP)—this would move her from 120-ish to around 100, and this would be good because then she is main draw in a Grand Slam which is an automatic $16,000 in your pocket if you show up to play as long as she can maintain that ranking.
Imagine showing up to play in a tournament knowing that you have to win 3 rounds in order for your ranking to increase—or, even better, in order just to MAINTAIN your ranking. Because remember, the points drop off. Let’s say Bertha won the 100K event almost exactly a year before she is playing another event. Schedules of tournaments each year vary, so let’s say the only tournament that worked for her or was available to her that time of year was a 50K. Miss Bertha Slammit could win the whole darn thing and her ranking would go down about 10 spots. And there’s nothing she could do about it.
The goal then for players is to be consistently playing in WTA tournaments where the points are considerably higher so that you always have the potential to go up in ranking if you do well. If you oscillate between the WTA and the ITF tournaments you have the potential to lose any hard-fought gains in ranking from playing on the ITF Circuit because the points are simply much lower than the points on the WTA Tour. The only way to consistently be playing WTA events is to get your ranking into a top 100 spot-better yet top 60 so that you are main draw, because WTA events also have qualifying which hold significantly lower points than the main draw.
I have illustrated the results diary of a player who is on a sticky line between being a constant on the WTA Tour and being a constant star on the ITF Circuit. I did not show the points differential too much between the WTA Tournaments and the ITF Circuit tournaments other than what you can see from Bertha Slammit’s results. The next blog, however, will show that point differential and demonstrate why tennis is a “top-heavy” sport.
I have been told I can improve my blog by shortening the posts-- this was my attempt. Only two pages long this time (or something like that)!! It’s a start. The good news is that I have already written the gist of the next blog so it should be coming soon. Be ready to delve once again into the “top-heavy” world of women’s professional tennis.
PS. I am in Puerto Rico right now at a 25K—after the “top-heavy” blog I will break down what a week is like at a tournament, day-by-day-by-grueling-day, hour-by-hour-by. . .you get the point. As for right now, I have no complaints J .
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