The Computer Pulled Rank

Venus Williams was right.

The WTA’s computer rankings are difficult for fans, players and media to understand, particularly when Williams won a tournament Sunday and dropped from No. 3 to No. 4 in the world.

Winning usually signifies moving forward, not backward, except in the byzantine world of professional tennis rankings.

How exactly did this happen? How did the best female player in the world tumble into a ranking free-fall this summer?

Williams defended her Wimbledon title in July and was ranked No. 2. Today, after trouncing Monica Seles in the final of the Acura Classic, she is down to No. 4. By the time she shows up in New York for the U.S. Open, Williams, the defending champion, could be seeded fourth with only one loss since Wimbledon.

Last week in Carlsbad, Williams could not pick up any ground because she won the tournament in 2000. By winning again in 2001, she was simply holding serve. Her next event is New Haven, Conn., which she also won last year. For Williams to make a move, Jennifer Capriati and Lindsay Davenport would have to stumble.

Capriati, ranked No. 2, is scheduled to play Toronto and New Haven and only has to defend third-round points from the Canadian Open last year. Davenport, who is No. 3, has more on the line, having reached the Manhattan Beach final last year and the third round at the Canadian Open.

Davenport moved past Williams mainly because she played poorly in Carlsbad last year. She lost to Kournikova in the second round last year, which allowed her to pick up more points by reaching the semifinals and losing to Williams this year.

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Williams is hampered by her light schedule and her brilliant 2000 summer. What hurt her in this case was a quarterfinal loss to Meghann Shaughnessy at Palo Alto last month. Williams won Palo Alto in 2000 and the early defeat this year knocked her out of the top two.

What is crucial and meaningful for the fans is that they might be prevented from seeing the best possible women’s final at the U.S. Open. Clearly, Williams and Capriati are the top two players this year, and a meeting in the final in New York could be a classic. It is entirely possible, if the rankings stay the same, that the players could meet in the semifinals.

Top-ranked Martina Hingis and Davenport very well may land in the other semifinal. Hingis has not won a Grand Slam title in 21/2 years and Davenport is Slam-less in a year and a half. For that matter, Hingis has not won a title since February and continues to sit atop the rankings.

This is her 200th week at the top. As for that issue, well, that’s another column.

Catching Up

It would be nice to report Michael Russell lived happily ever after his feel-good French Open run.

Gustavo Kuerten, visibly relieved after escaping a match point against the qualifier Russell, drew a heart in the Center Court clay and went on to win his next three matches, resulting in his third French Open title.

Of course, happily ever after is relative in tennis. There is always another tournament, another country and another surface. So, if you assumed Russell’s life changed completely after one wondrous tournament in Paris, that’s not completely accurate.

“Well, I signed a $10-million contract,” Russell said, joking.

Let’s put it this way. Russell wasn’t being flown off to Nike headquarters in Oregon during the middle of a tournament to be courted, as was Marat Safin, a couple of weeks ago. No new clothing deals for the man who almost beat Kuerten.

“I get an extra bag of peanuts when I fly Southwest,” he said, laughing.

Still, not everything remains the same for Russell. The French Open improved his ranking, and Russell was able to get direct entry into a couple of tour events on clay in Europe, sparing him from the grueling life of qualifying.

He is 2-6 since Paris, including consecutive first-round losses to Tommy Robredo in Stuttgart, Germany; Kristian Pless in Sopot, Poland; Hicham Arazi in Montreal; and Alberto Martin in Cincinnati.

Russell realized the impact of his fourth-round match at the French Open when he was talking to Arazi after their match in Montreal last week. Arazi was not treating him like aqualifier.

“He said he had the same game plan against me that he used against [Lleyton] Hewitt,” Russell said. “I’m practicing with a lot of guys. They all know I can play now. It’s not like they go out there and don’t know who I am, which is kind of a bad thing. There are no more surprises. They have a game plan on how to beat you. Most of my matches that I win, I have to fight it out. It’s not like I’m going to serve 140.”

That was illustrated when Russell and hard-serving Taylor Dent played an exhibition Friday night, a special event in Kalamazoo, Mich., leading to the most prestigious junior event in the U.S. Dent won in a tiebreaker and hit a serve of 133 mph.

“They put a radar gun up for him to see how fast he could serve, and to see how slow I served,” Russell said.

Playing Dent, as it turned out, was easier than making a speech to the kids, Russell said. “Sometimes I get nervous talking in front a group of people, but when I’m on radio or TV, you don’t see anybody looking at you, there’s no audience directly in front of you,” he said. “It’s easy to be relaxed.”

One other thing that changed was that Russell has had a couple of opportunities to do some television work, once with John McEnroe during the French Open and last week with British TV.

“It’s pretty easy when you are doing it because [McEnroe] says whatever he wants,” Russell said. “So I know whatever I say, it’s not going to be as bad as what he says. It’s kind of nice. He’s always ripping players, so I can do what I want.”