On the (Page) Ranking of Professional Tennis Players

We explore the relationship between official rankings of professional tennis players and rankings computed using a variant of the PageRank algorithm as proposed by Radicchi in 2011. We show Radicchi’s equations follow a natural interpretation of the PageRank algorithm and present up-to-date comparis...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inComputer Performance Engineering pp. 237 - 247
Main Authors Dingle, Nicholas, Knottenbelt, William, Spanias, Demetris
Format Book Chapter
LanguageEnglish
Published Berlin, Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 2013
SeriesLecture Notes in Computer Science
Subjects
Female Player
PageRank Algorithm
Ranking System
Tennis Player
Weak Player
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Summary:We explore the relationship between official rankings of professional tennis players and rankings computed using a variant of the PageRank algorithm as proposed by Radicchi in 2011. We show Radicchi’s equations follow a natural interpretation of the PageRank algorithm and present up-to-date comparisons of official rankings with PageRank-based rankings for both the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) and Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) tours. For top-ranked players these two rankings are broadly in line; however, there is wide variation in the tail which leads us to question the degree to which the official ranking mechanism reflects true player ability. For a 390-day sample of recent tennis matches, PageRank-based rankings are found to be better predictors of match outcome than the official rankings.
ISBN:9783642367809
3642367801
ISSN:0302-9743
1611-3349
DOI:10.1007/978-3-642-36781-6_17