The July rankings (Open | Women) is a hurricane of movement. Lots of events cycled off the rankings. Four big events came on. The number one player changed again. Two players entered the top ten, fourteen players entered the top 100 and thirty players entered the rankings list.
Number One
Dave Lewis returns to number one, ousting Tom Leitner after only one month. C’mon Dave! Give someone else a chance up there. Actually, Dave was able to regain #1 by winning WFDF with Arthur Coddington. Since Tom Leitner did not play the event, he did not have the opportunity to earn the big points that come with a major championship. Just wait until later this month, though. The rankings list released just before the FPA World Championships will include new results but will also NOT include the 2003 World Disc Games/WFDF. Lewis/Coddington, the champions in 2003, will lose a huge number of points, as will most of the top ten players. Look for another eye-popping reshuffling in the days before the world championships.
Top Ten
Jeff Kruger’s second place at WFDF helps him re-enter the top ten at number nine. The bigger story is Fabio Sanna, a first time Top Ten player this month as he jumps from 14 to 10 based on strong results at the European Freestyle Championships.
The Top 100
There is too much going on here to even attempt to break it down. It is chaos, wonderful chaos. Active players are vaulting upwards. Inactive players are dropping down. Glance through the names in the Top 100. How many players do you personally know? How many countries are represented? That’s right!
Upside
Sometimes, players do well at a tournament, but when they look at the rankings their points or rank don’t go up much. I’m always here to help figure out what happened, but most often it is the case of upside. Only your best five results count. If you have five or more results, you have to beat that fifth result to improve your points. If your fifth result is small, you have a lot of Upside. Almost any result will help your point total, and with a big result you can move up lots of spots. If your fifth result is big, you have no Upside. You may have to play a huge tournament to even improve your points.
I created an Upside List to who you how this works. Here are the ten players with the most Upside on the list:
1. Murphy, Dave (Rank: 11, Fifth Best Result: 3.5, Tourneys: 5, Best Five: 893.25)
2. Gauthier, Jake (Rank: 30, Fifth Best Result: 7.5, Tourneys: 5, Best Five: 576)
3. Downs, Rik (Rank: 103, Fifth Best Result: 8, Tourneys: 5, Best Five: 209)
4. Graves, Anne (Rank: 140, Fifth Best Result: 8.5, Tourneys: 6, Best Five: 148.75)
5. Bergman, Sarah (Rank: 179, Fifth Best Result: 9, Tourneys: 7, Best Five: 109.85)
6. Cordero, Sara (Rank: 182, Fifth Best Result: 9.5, Tourneys: 5, Best Five: 107)
7. Lowry, Mary (Rank: 60, Fifth Best Result: 10, Tourneys: 6, Best Five: 317.25)
8. Audino, Gaia (Rank: 167, Fifth Best Result: 10, Tourneys: 7, Best Five: 119.75)
9. Cole, Tom (Rank: 84, Fifth Best Result: 11, Tourneys: 5, Best Five: 243.5)
10. Cohn, Eddy (Rank: 139, Fifth Best Result: 11, Tourneys: 6, Best Five: 150.5)
Compare Jake Gauthier, with the second best Upside, to Tom Leitner, who actually has the 76th best upside. Jake is coming off an injury. He hasn’t been playing many events, but he has five events banked from before he hurt his knee. To increase his points, he only has to score more than 7.5 ranking points at a tournament – for him that basically means showing up and twiddling his fingers on the playing field. If he wins an event, he could earn 125 to 400 points (the top performer at the FPA Worlds usually accumulates about 400 points). Almost all of that (all but 7.5 points) would improve his point total. What happens? He flies up the rankings.
Tom Leitner has an insane amount of ranking points, but his fifth best result is 201.5 points. 201.5! There are few opportunities to grab that amount of points. Third place at WFDF this year got 204 points after bonus points were factored in. Winning a regular tournament with almost every top player in the field would get you just about 200 points. Tom is almost maxed out. He has low Upside.
So, if you are concerned about your ranking after a proud result, consider your Upside. The full Upside list is below. Keep in mind that there will be profound changes in this list between now and FPA Worlds because of the expiration of 2003 WFDF points and the addition of 2005 Manresa and SuperHein points.
Continue reading “Rankings: July 2005 And A Note About Upside”
