About
Below are some comments about the belt and this website.
Most importantly, TML-Database and Jeff Sackmann’s Github have all the data used for this site.
What is the Tennis Belt?
The belt is a way of tracking who is the current champion of tennis as a matter of direct succession. You beat the current champion, you get the belt. Someone then beats you, they get the belt.
It's definitely not a good measure of who the best tennis player is at any given moment. Or at least not as good as other meaures, like
ATP Rankings or ELO. Over time, though,
as you can see on the stats page, the best players do spend more time with the belt. You could argue there's some value
for comparing overall careers between generations. Also, it's just sorta fun to track.
Where does the belt start?
An interesting question. The data I use starts in 1968, which is the year
that marks the beginning of the Open Era. If you keep up much with tennis,
you'll know that most tennis records or history is kept track of "in the Open Era". It's similar to the way that people tend to start basketball stats after
the ABA–NBA merger or football stats after the first Super Bowl.
Therefore, I opted for the first holder of the belt to be the first tournament winner in the Open Era. That tournament was the 1968 British Hard Court Championships. The men's winner was Aussie Ken Rosewall, and the women's winner was Brit Virginia Wade. Because of the tour's format, it doesn't actually matter much where you start, since all paths will converge relatively quickly. More on that in the next section.
Therefore, I opted for the first holder of the belt to be the first tournament winner in the Open Era. That tournament was the 1968 British Hard Court Championships. The men's winner was Aussie Ken Rosewall, and the women's winner was Brit Virginia Wade. Because of the tour's format, it doesn't actually matter much where you start, since all paths will converge relatively quickly. More on that in the next section.
On the tournament nature of tennis...
The difference between tennis and college football which massively changes the flow of the belt is the prevalence of tournaments. Clearly, if any belt-holder enters a tournament, the belt will ultimately find its way to the winner of the tournament. Whereas the ATP Tour is effectively a yearlong series of tournaments, in college football there is only one tournament at the end of the year, the College Football Playoff. Even so, there’s no guarantee that the belt will appear in the CFP. It’s reasonable to guess teams in the playoff are somewhat more likely to have the belt at the end of the year, as they have been winning more games than other teams, however there have been plenty of seasons where this was not the case.
In tennis, nearly every match for the belt is part of a tournament. (The exceptions to this are some events with round robin formats: Davis Cup, Laver Cup, and the opening portion of the year-end finals.) For large tournaments – the Grand Slams and bigger Masters 1000s – there is pretty much a guarantee the belt-holder will enter the tournament, and therefore the belt will funnel to the champion. The only way this doesn’t happen is due to some medical withdrawal before or during the tournament.
In tennis, nearly every match for the belt is part of a tournament. (The exceptions to this are some events with round robin formats: Davis Cup, Laver Cup, and the opening portion of the year-end finals.) For large tournaments – the Grand Slams and bigger Masters 1000s – there is pretty much a guarantee the belt-holder will enter the tournament, and therefore the belt will funnel to the champion. The only way this doesn’t happen is due to some medical withdrawal before or during the tournament.
The Pete Sampras Problem
The belt started the 2002 US Open in the hands of (or around the waist of?) James Blake. Blake was then beaten by Lleyton Hewitt, who was in turn beaten by Andre Agassi in the semifinals. Agassi then faced longtime rival Pete Sampras in the championship. Famously, the 17th seed Sampras would go on to beat Agassi and win the tournament. Who did Sampras play next? He didn’t. He never played another ATP match. There’s the Pete Sampras Problem: he retired with the belt.
So how do we proceed? I will survey a few different options.
1) Let Agassi keep the belt. This one is perhaps the easiest, but it definitely feels antithetical to the idea of the belt. He had the belt and he lost a match. By definition, he should no longer have the belt. But if he loses it, where does it go?
2) Give the belt to the winner of the next tournament. Well, there were two tournaments running concurrently the following week, one in Lyon and one in Vienna. Seems unfair to choose between the two, and both were fairly small.
3) Give the belt to the winner of the next big tournament. The next tournament of the Masters series (the largest behind Grand Slams at the time) was the Madrid Open. Coincidentally, this is the first tournament Andre Agassi plays after the US Open, and he wins it in a walkover. So this actually converges with option (1) immediately.
4) Give it to the winner of the year-end finals in November, which was Lleyton Hewitt. This one seems fair, and Hewitt ended the year as number one in addition to winning the tournament, so he doubly earned it. However this method does have the downside that the belt disappears from September 2002 to January 2003.
Ultimately, Andre Agassi will once again win the Australian Open in January of 2003, so no matter what path you choose for the belt, Agassi will certainly have it once again by the end of January. The question is where should it be from September 2002 until then? In the timeline, I opt to give it to Hewitt at the end of the 2002 year, so he starts the Australian Open in 2003 with the belt. Then it funnels back to Agassi, and we are back to where we were before the Sampras dilemma.
So how do we proceed? I will survey a few different options.
1) Let Agassi keep the belt. This one is perhaps the easiest, but it definitely feels antithetical to the idea of the belt. He had the belt and he lost a match. By definition, he should no longer have the belt. But if he loses it, where does it go?
2) Give the belt to the winner of the next tournament. Well, there were two tournaments running concurrently the following week, one in Lyon and one in Vienna. Seems unfair to choose between the two, and both were fairly small.
3) Give the belt to the winner of the next big tournament. The next tournament of the Masters series (the largest behind Grand Slams at the time) was the Madrid Open. Coincidentally, this is the first tournament Andre Agassi plays after the US Open, and he wins it in a walkover. So this actually converges with option (1) immediately.
4) Give it to the winner of the year-end finals in November, which was Lleyton Hewitt. This one seems fair, and Hewitt ended the year as number one in addition to winning the tournament, so he doubly earned it. However this method does have the downside that the belt disappears from September 2002 to January 2003.
Ultimately, Andre Agassi will once again win the Australian Open in January of 2003, so no matter what path you choose for the belt, Agassi will certainly have it once again by the end of January. The question is where should it be from September 2002 until then? In the timeline, I opt to give it to Hewitt at the end of the 2002 year, so he starts the Australian Open in 2003 with the belt. Then it funnels back to Agassi, and we are back to where we were before the Sampras dilemma.
The Ashleigh Barty Problem
If you read The Pete Sampras Problem, you see where this is going. Ashleigh Barty retired after winning the 2022 Australian Open, and in doing so
retired with the belt. Unfortunately this one is a bit more awkward than the Pete Sampras case, because it is the very beginning of the season and
there is quite a bit of time until the next major. Who gets the belt next is a bit more up in the air.
Ultimately what I've gone with is giving it to Iga Swiatek after winning Indian Wells. She then goes on to win the next tournament, the Miami Open, in the midst of what would be an extremely impressive, and longest of the 21st century, 37 match win streak. Seeing that she was beating everyone she played for a stretch of almost 40 matches, I feel pretty good that at some point along this run she would have acquired the belt.
Ultimately what I've gone with is giving it to Iga Swiatek after winning Indian Wells. She then goes on to win the next tournament, the Miami Open, in the midst of what would be an extremely impressive, and longest of the 21st century, 37 match win streak. Seeing that she was beating everyone she played for a stretch of almost 40 matches, I feel pretty good that at some point along this run she would have acquired the belt.