The Pro Racquetball Stats Blog has tourney previews, tourney wrap-ups, and new site content announcements for www.proracquetballstats.com
The LPRT has released its schedule for next year and it looks great. Lots of new events, fully 5 Grand Slams, and 16 total Tier 1s/Grand Slams. That’s 6 more events than last year, great news for the sport.
Take a look:
https://www.ladiesprofessionalracquetballtour.com/
It looks to me like all 10 events from last year are returning, and they’ve added 6 new events in Chesapeake VA, Mexico City, Ft. Lauderdale, Seattle, Guadelajara and Denver.
Awesome!
In the wake of the Mexican Junior Nationals event a few weeks ago, I took some time to do some data loading so that the “matrix” reports I have showing all winners for all age divisions for all of time looked a bit better.
This is a quick notification post to rball fans to inform you of some data loading for Mexican Junior data, if you were interested.
Here’s the “matrix” reports showing all winners of all divisions:
– All Mexico Junior Boys: http://rball.pro/E1C550
– All Mexico Junior Girls: http://rball.pro/A267D1
You can also pull down the full match results for any year from the Event list in the Juniors database. I generally only put in the “older” age groups of full results (14s sometimes, 16s and 18s) and just note the final for the younger groups. Furthermore, there’s no Double Elimination results in the database; most of these events are DE.
Mexican Junior events have been a bit tough to keep track of; in any given year the US and Canada have “one” Junior National event. Mexico meanwhile has a Junior Olympics event (which sometimes takes “liberties” with the age groups, or skips them altogether), a conventional Junior Nationals, and even “World Selection events” that supersede the results of nationals. So as it turned out … some of the results I had previously for “Mexican Junior Nationals” were actually from the Junior Olympics events. I’ve now cleaned all that up.
We have online data for Mexican Jr Nationals for at least all winners from 2012-present now, thanks to some archive.org work. The earliest years generally only have winners posted, even for the older divisions. Hopefully, I havn’t made any mistakes; if anyone sees data entry errors please let me know.
Thanks to Ryan Rodgers who hooked me up with 2013 data so I could finish the data entry.
——————–
From here … in order to fully populate the Mexican Junior data, I need help from the Association. @Federación Federación Mexicana de Raquetbol if you’re reading this, do you have past records or past draw sheets I can leverage to do data entry? Do you have a list of at least the winners of past Junior championships?
Next up, i’ll do some similar work for Canadian juniors.
thanks.
Pro Racquetball Stats fans may not know it, but at the bottom of the Report selection page for each tour I have some static pages of information that I maintain. One of those is kind of a running diary of the season of “events” as they occur.
http://www.proracquetballstats.com/i…/year_end_summaries.htm
Here’s a list of notable “events” from this past season, which has seen some significant change in the structure of the tour. This is a subset of what’s on the above link, with text abbreviated for brevity.
– August 2018: the IRT season opens with questions as to whether Kane Waselenchuk is actually “retired” after events stemming from the last event in Florida in April and comments made on social media and in interviews over the summer.
– Oct 2018: Kane enters and wins the US Open, his 14th title. Kane is now simultaneously the oldest and youngest ever winner of the US Open.
– Nov 2018: Commissioner Andy Kulback takes a “leave of absence” from the IRT, and IRT CEO John Scott announces new managerial structure for the tour, which installs Mike Grisz as the Chairman of the board.
– Nov 2018: thanks to Kane’s Jan 2018 injury, he drops in the 12-month rolling rankings to #6 while Alex Landa ascends to #1. This leads to a series of discussions and criticisms of the tour ranking system in racquetball forums, with calls for protected seeding or changes to the ranking system.
– Feb 2019: Scott resigns as CEO of the tour after experiencing some medical and personal issues. Current Chairman of the Board Mike Grisz takes over as interim CEO.
– Mar 2019: IRT announces a partnership with Pablo Fajre to broadcast events, a departure from the existing IRT Network infrastructure and presumably an end to the competing WRT tour.
– Mar 2019: the first ever IRT event occurs in Bolivia, the Open Iris Bolivia Grand Slam. #1 Waselenchuk, along with 4 other top 10 players do not make the trip. Bolivian #1 Luis Conrrado Moscoso Serrudo wins the event, defeating IRT #2 Rocky Carson in the final.
– April 2019: Former CEO Scott divests himself fully from the IRT by selling his ownership shares to Maryland-based racquetball enthusiast Slemo Warigon and his wife Charity. This ends Scott’s not-quite two year ownership of the tour, and a much longer involvement in the sport. Coinciding with this move, Grisz takes over officially as both CEO and Chairman of the IRT Board. The IRT is now a fully volunteer-driven organization.
– April 2019: Former Commissioner Kulbeck returns to the tour with some limited/as-of-yet to be determined involvement going forward.
– April 2019: Waselenchuk loses a quarter-final match in Sarasota to Alvaro Beltran breaking an 83-match winning streak on tour and becoming the first on-the-court, non injury related match loss since Sept 2013.
– May 2019: Kane wins the final Tier 1 of the season in Syosset to secure his 13th pro title.
– May 2019: US Open director Doug Ganim announces that he’s retiring after its 25th iteration in 2020, leaving some time to coordinate a replacement plan but also throwing the biggest racquetball event’s future into doubt.
– June 2019: After several non-Tier 1s wrap up, the final 2018-19 season finishes. The final event is won in surprising fashion by Javier Estrada, who takes out a slew of top IRT pros to win the title.
——————-
Next Up: Pan Am Games. I’ll wait until the knockout draws are produced to do “previews.”
Over the past week or so, we found out through various forums that the Mexican National teams for the Pan Am Games were named in the past few days … and to say that the selection on the men’s side is “curious” would be an understatement.
As with the USA, the Mexican delegation’s team size was lowered to be just 3 players on the Men’s side due to results at the Pan American Racquetball Championships (PARC) earlier this year. Which means that, like with the USA leaving off National singles finalist David Horn , that it was likely that a significant Mexican singles player would be left out.
See http://www.internationalracquetball.com/xviii-pan-american…/ for the team size determination from the results at PARC 2019.
The Men’s team as announced:
– Alvaro Beltran
– Javier Mar
– Rodrigo Montoya Solis
The obvious and (frankly) ridiculous omission is Alex Landa . Landa WON Mexican National singles earlier this year. So your reigning National singles champ, an event that exists to decide who represents your country in international events … is being ignored when determining the team playing in an international event.
Apparently, the Mexican federation used the results of its singles players at the PARC event to chose its singles representative. In a response to the uproar, the FMR president claims to have informed the players ahead of PARCs that their results would matter, this despite the entry form for Mexican National Singles in 2019 specifically stating that the winner and finalist of singles would represent Mexico at both PARCs and the Pan Am Games.
The team of Mar/Montoya won Mexican National doubles, so they’re a natural doubles pairing. Montoya likely plays the second singles spot, given that he was the 2018 Mexican national singles champ and then subsequently won 2018 Worlds. Of course, Mar himself is no singles slouch; he was the 2017 National singles champ and has represented Mexico well in international events in limited experience. So we’ll have to wait and see who takes the #2 singles spot for Mexico (note: it seems it will be Montoya playing #2 singles based on press releases).
But to this outside observer, it seems like the Mexican Federation went out of its way to find the one plausible scenario where they could make an argument to exclude Landa at the benefit of Beltran. Not surprisingly, Landa took to social media, and the story was picked up by numerous media outlets, and (if i’m reading the posts correctly), Landa may be summarily quitting the Mexican national team altogether and exercising his dual citizenship option to begin playing for the USA. More to follow.
——————–
On the Women’s side, there’s also some drama, but not nearly as bad as omitting the sitting singles national champ. The Mexican women’s team won both singles and doubles at PARC, giving them 4 team members in Lima. I’m inferring the team based on press releases/official posts on facebook pages. We know …
– Paola Longoria
– Samantha Salas Solis
– Montse Mejia
– Alexandra Herrera
Are named for Lima. But … by insider accounts, Longoria & Mejia will play singles, while Longoria/Salas together will play doubles, which leaves Herrera … named to the team and traveling to Peru only to sit and watch? Its unclear.
The “drama” on the women’s side? Despite the fact that Mejia beat Longoria to win Mexican National singles final earlier this year, Longoria will play #1 seed in Lima … by virtue of finishing higher at PARCs than Mejia. The FMR is using the same logic exercised to omit Landa in order to seed Longoria higher than the player who topped her at Nationals. Furthermore, Salas has lodged criticism in various forums that she was passed over, given her dominant position on the pro tour this season (and she’s not wrong … but lost to Mejia at Nationals at an inopportune time).
Longoria & Salas are the natural doubles representatives; they won Mexican National doubles and have a slew of international titles together, and this will apparently be the sole event Salas enters.
——————–
However it turns out, and who ever plays, you have to think the Mexican contingent is favorites to take home a slew of medals across the board.
——————–
The Pan Am games starts 7/26/19 and runs through 8/11/19. Follow along at http://www.internationalracquetball.com/ , and follow @international racquetball federation on Facebook for live streaming throughout.
Federación Mexicana de Raquetbol
International Racquetball Federation – IRF
A quick run-through the tour-related significant events on the LPRT this season. This data is kept in running format at this link, constantly being updated as major player/tour news happens:
http://www.proracquetballstats.com/l…/lprt_tour_history.html
– June 2018: Jessica Parrilla, just finishing up the 2017-18 season ranked 3rd on tour, suffers a knee ligament injury while competing in the 2018 Mexican Worlds Selection event. She does not return to the LPRT until the last event of the 2018-19 season.
– June 2018: World #1 Paola Longoria has a WADA scare ahead of the International Racquetball Federation – IRF summer events (Central American & Caribbean Games). Her suspension is overturned on appeal and she competes (and wins) the final over Guatemalan Gaby Martinez.
– August 2018: Guatemalan Gaby Martinez shocks the women’s racquetball world by upsetting #1 Longoria in the 2018 Worlds final in Barranquila, Colombia. She made a statement early, downing Vargas in the RRs, then easily beat Salas in the qtrs, Mendez in the semis before taking out Longoria in a tie-breaker final.
– Dec 2018: at the half-way point of the new season, #1 Paola Longoria and #2 Samantha Salas Solis have separated themselves from the rest of the pack; five of the six tournaments have been #1 vs #2 in the finals, and they’ve opened up a significant gap to the next tier of players. Frederique Lambert has fallen nearly out of the top 10 thanks to school commitments: she’s finishing Medical school.
– Mar 2019: Jessica Parrilla returns to the court for the first time since her June 2018 injury, competing in the Mexican Nationals. She played both
singles and doubles in the event but did not travel to the subsequent LPRT event in Bolivia. She ends up playing just one LPRT event on the year,
the season’s last tourney in Kansas in June.
– Mar 2019: Ana Gabriela Martinez suddenly announces her retirement from the sport at age 19, to focus on her studies and other interests. She retires ranked #9 on the tour despite only playing part time. In 2018 she defeated Longoria to take the IRF World Championship as an 18yr old, then later in the year missed out on a rare chance at the Adult/Junior double by losing to Mejia in the 18U world Junior final.
– Mar 2019: The Bolivian Grand Slam event happens, the first time an LPRT event has been held in the country. Unfortunately, Paola Longoria suffered
a slight injury and missed the event. Despite Longoria’s absensce, the Ladies had a strong showing, with 8 of the top 10 players traveling (Lambert also
missed the event). The local Bolivian players had a great showing, with Angelica Barrios making the semis and upsetting several top LPRT pros, and naturalized Bolivian Maria Jose Vargas taking the title in a hard fought 5-game tiebreaker over Samantha Salas.
– Jun 2019: Paola Longoria completes another undefeated season, with Samantha Salas making the finals of 9 of the 10 events on the year, clearly
establishing themselves as the two top players on tour. Last season’s #2 Lambert has fallen all the way to #9 on the season, having finished
medical school in May.
that’s it for the season. We anxiously await the announcement of the 2019-20 slate of events.
With the last event in Kansas completed, the LPRT 2018-19 season is officially complete.
With the completion of the season, we’ve updated a number of files and data within the database:
– http://rball.pro/05916A is a direct link to the Year Ending standings
– http://rball.pro/B0643F is the Season Summary report per player, a nice query summarizing the Wins/Finals/Semis/etc per player on tour.
– http://rball.pro/A020CA is the Season Seed Report, a great report showing how players’ seeds varied throughout the year.
——————————
The Static links are now updated with 2018-19 results (all of these are located at the bottom of the Report Selection Page for each tour):
– List of Year End title winners: http://www.proracquetballstats.com/…/lprt_year_end_titles.h…
– Tour History: http://www.proracquetballstats.com/l…/lprt_tour_history.htmlhas been updated for significant events this season.
———————–
Analysis/thoughts on Year End Rankings and notable player movement.
#1 Paola Longoria finishes the year undefeated, 37-0 It is the 5th time she’s accomplished this feat, and she now has just four on-court losses in the last 8 professional seasons. She sews up her 10th career pro title. With her win in Kansas City, she gets her 91st career title in the Database (we’re aware of the discrepancy between our systems and her records and are working to figure out the delta actively).
She now sits as an astounding 439-30 in her pro career, a .936 winning percentage. She still trails Michelle Gould in this metric, whose database W/L percentage currently sits at 147-9 and which will only improve as we eventually fill in tournament detail in the mid 1990s. By way of comparison, both of these marks are better than Kane Waselenchuk‘s career mark of .918, which is considered in awe on the men’s pro racquetball circles.
#2 Samantha Salas Solis had as good of a season as you could have given that the #1 player went undefeated: she made 9 finals in 9 tries (missing one event due to travel issues mid-season). She’ll be kicking herself she didn’t claim the title in the one event that Paola missed … that being the Bolivian Grand Slam and the big check that comes with it. But a great season for Salas, who started the season ranked outside the top 10 due to injury comeback and is now firmly entrenched at #2 for the forseeable future.
Salas is now just 3-50 against Longoria though, and needs to find a way to beat her long-time rival if she wishes to put her name in the record books. She did stretch Paola to 5 games once this season, in Syosset, but most of their finals were 3-game affairs.
#3 Maria Jose Vargas Parada, like Salas, also started the year still working her way back into touring status thanks to a hiatus to have a kid. But thanks to her title in Bolivia, she ascended to #3, where she stayed the rest of the way out. She maintains a slight lead for 3rd over Herrera. Vargas is just 2-8 career over #2 Salas, which includes the win in Bolivia, so she has her work cut out for her if she wishes to ascend any higher.
#4 Alexandra Herrera had a very consistent season; she started it ranked 3rd, finished it ranked 4th, made a bunch of semis, never got upset prior to the qtrs … but really only had one break through tourney, making the final when the #2 seed Lambert got upset very early in Laurel. On the bright side, at season’s end she broke a career duck against Rajsich, finally beating her head to head in the season’s final event to secure #4 on the season.
– #5 Rhonda Rajsich kept chugging in her 20th pro season, finishing in the top 5 for the 18th time. A couple of early season upsets dropped her to the 6th-7th seed, but then stronger results as the season went on got her back. She treads water from last season, finishing 5th for the second season in a row. Rajsich overtook Cheryl Gudinas this season and now has the most ever appearances in pro tour history, a streak she seems set to continue for the forseeable future.
– #6 Natalia Mendez Erlwein started the season seeded 6th and ended it 6th, and made 8 quarters in 10 pro tourneys. She had an interesting 2nd half of the season, where her specific seeding drove four consecutive quarter-final match-ups with countrymate and doubles partner Vargas … resulting in four of her eight quarter final defeats on the season. There’s a significant points gap from Rhonda to Natalia, one that only a breakthrough tourney will solve. Her four-straight match-ups against Vargas has me thinking that maybe the LPRT should consider seed flipping like the IRT does; there were also a number of other repeated qtr final match-ups (Herrera-Rajsich, Salas-Enriquez) that would be mixed up and give the 5-8 seeded players a different look in the qtrs.
– #7 Nancy Enriquez took a slight step back from last season, taking a couple of early upsets and dropping from 6th last season to 7th this season. Her 7-seed routes her to #2 Salas each quarterfinal, a tough spot to be in considering how well Salas is playing and considering that Salas has just one career loss to Enriquez (way back in 2011).
– #8 Amaya Cris finished ranked 8th for the 2nd season in a row, and had a similar performance this year to last. She was able to fight back into the top 8 by season’s end, having dropped out of the top 8 mid-way through the season. She made 5 quarter finals in 10 tourneys but wasn’t able to break through to the semis.
– #9 Frederique Lambert missed half the season and dropped from #2 last season to finish 9th. As is well known, she completed Medical school this year and graduated in May, and even making half the tourneys this year seems like a pretty amazing accomplishment for someone finishing such a rigorous academic schedule. This breaks a streak of four straight seasons ranked in the top 4 for Frederique. One has to wonder what the future holds; after you finish medical school usually medical training commences and I have a hard time believing Lambert will be able to do a time-intensive internship and frequently take off 4-day weekends to compete in tourneys. We all await to see what happens as it pertains to the tour; nobody likes losing a top player.
– #10 Adriana Riveros finished 10th on the season, improving from 12th last season and now is the fourth straight season in this 10-14 range for the Colombian. She made two quarter finals in 10 tourneys on the year
———————–
11th-20th ranked players:
– #11 Gaby Martinez earned enough points from early events to finish 11th despite announcing her retirement from the sport to focus on school earlier this season. She made two semis in three events this year and got a career win over Longoria in 2018’s worlds final, making this observer wonder if she wasn’t the heir-apparent to the crown (or at the least, a good competitor for the top spot going forward). I hope she can find time to continue to play and compete at some point in the future, because (as with Lambert) its a bummer to lose a top competitor.
– #12 Masiel Rivera Oporto played a full season and was rewarded with her top ever finish. She made one quarter on the year thanks to probably her best win on the season, over Riveros at the Bolivian grand slam on home turf.
– #13 Brenda Laime Jalil made 6 main draws in 9 events, a big improvement from last season (when she failed to advance to the 16s all year) and enough to get her into the top 16.
– #14 Ana Laura Flores Saavedra made one quarter with a solid win over Mendez in the season opener, and played in 6 of the 10 events on the year.
– #15 Cassie Lee improved from #21 last year, making 5 main draws out of 9 tournaments attended.
– #16 Yazmine Sabja Aliss played just 4 events, being based in Bolivia, but made two quarters and got some solid wins along the way. One has to think that her playing the tour FT would have her challenging for a top 8 spot. too bad Bolivia is so far away.
– #17 Montse Mejia had an interesting season: she played 5 pro events and lost in the 16s each time (3 times to Longoria, once each to Lambert and Vargas). But, outside of the pro tour she won World 18U juniors (beating Gaby Martinez twice along the way), then at Mexican Nationals beat in order Enriquez, Salas and Longoria to take the title. She faltered at the PARCs as the #1 seed (losing to Mendez in the qtrs), but one has to wonder what she’s capable of if she can get out of the 14-16 seed range and get some deeper runs on the pro tour. I think she’s one of the top 5 women in the world right now and hope she can play a full slate next season.
– #18 Adrienne Fisher Haynes dropped in the season ending rankings for the 3rd successive season, getting upset in the 32s 5 times in 8 events this season.
– #19 Angelica Barrios made the semis of the Bolivian grand slam, beating two top 8 players along the way, which propelled her to a top 20 finish despite just three appearances. She’s also put her name into the mix for the Bolivian national team, representing her country at PARCs earlier this year.
– #20 Carla Muñoz Montesinos had a qtr and two main draws in 6 appearances this year, a busy one for her as she finished up school in Colorado, made the finals of NCAA intercollegiates and represented Chile at three different IRF events.
———————–
commentary on players ranked 21st on-wards:
– #22 Susy Acosta finished 22nd … in her 21st pro season.
– #24 Michelle De La Rosa made a semi and played top ranked pros tough in limited appearnces this year.
– #25 Kelani Lawrence finished 25th in limited appearances but won the US National title.
– #27 Hollie Rae Scott finished 27th but won the NCAA Intercollegiate title.
– #29 Laura Brandt finished 29th … at the age of 56.
– #31 Valeria Centellas finished 31st … and is the reigning World junior 16U champ. She played #1 for Bolivia at the PARC games in April and made the quarters … in her age 17 season.
– #37 Jessica Parrilla finished 37th after missing basically the entire season recovering from a bad knee injury. She will fight back to regain her status on tour starting next season after finishing 3rd last season.
———————–
That’s it for the season. We look forward to seeing what next year has in store. I sense a step up in events, I hope to see more dual tour events like what is done in Minneapolis and Bolivia, and I hope to see more events in Mexico that draw the local player base.
———————–
LPRT USA Racquetball International Racquetball Tour International Racquetball Federation – IRF
A quick public service announcement for the Reaching Your Dream Foundation organization (RYDF), run by SF bay-area based Michael Lippitt.
Pro Racquetball Stats collaborates with RYDF and provides some RYDF-specific reports highlighting per-event results for RYDF-sponsored players. And we support the initiative of providing assistance to help keep pro players playing pro racquetball.
Click on the link below to sign up for their newsletter, and of course consider contributing to the cause.
I write this kind of tongue in cheek, but I got a (possibly spam) email from the website feedspot.com stating that our blog has been named one of the “Top 10 Racquetball blogs” on the internet.
https://blog.feedspot.com/racquetball_blogs/
is the link to the top rball blogs.
I kind of laugh at this because … well as you might imagine, there’s not a ton of us actually doing Racquetball Blogs. The first two blogs mentioned are JT Rball’s Daily Racquetball and Evan Pritchett‘s Racquetball Blog, which are basically the only other blogs i’m aware of. #4 is the Reddit feed.
But … maybe we’ll have more blogs and more content being generated soon.
Syosset was the last Tier 1 of the season, and as noted in the previews for this event, the #1 spot for the season was technically in the balance heading into the event. Kane Waselenchuk entered the Syosset event with a 132 point lead over #2 Rocky Carson in the year end title race. They had both opened up a massive gap even to the #3 ranked player; nearly 700 points separated #2 and #3 heading into the event, and that gap has only widened after the event. So Syosset was all about determining #1 for this year.
By winning the event, Kane has now distanced himself by a sufficient amount of points from Rocky to have ensured himself the year end title. This post explains why (at least as I understand the system), and talks about the rest of the top 10 ramifications.
5/6/19 updated points standings are now online here: https://www.irt-tour.com/singles-rankings/
As the tour standings now sit, Kane leads Rocky by 234 points. This is roughly 100 more points of a lead than he had heading into Syosset, due to the difference of 100 points between winning a Tier 1 event (400 points) and losing in the final (300).
Now, there are still multiple events left on the IRT schedule between now and the end of June (notionally the end of the season each year); I postulated before the Syosset event that those events could actually come into play if the results went a certain way this past weekend. Players get 120 points for winning IRT Tier 2 events … and there are two Tier 2s still on the schedule (Costa Rica in two weeks time and Chihuahua Mexico in Mid June), at least one of which i’ve heard Carson is scheduled to attend.
So why can’t Rocky go win both of those Tier 2s and get 240 additional points to overtake Kane for the title, since he trails by 234 points? Because the tour only takes each players’ best 9 results for the season … and a potential 120 point Tier 2 win would not be enough to replace any bad results for Rocky this season. Plus, for the final season rankings players drop their lowest tournament result (which for Kane would be a 0 point missed event). Rocky made the semis or better in ALL NINE IRT events this year, guaranteeing him at least 220 points per event. So Rocky actually cannot improve his current points totals one bit from where they are now, hence Kane’s insurmountable points lead.
So, Congrats to Kane on his 13th pro title (click here for a season summary for Kane’s career: http://rball.pro/C08BD1) and Rocky finishes 2nd for the ninth season in his career (click here for the same for Rocky: http://rball.pro/610C77).
Once all the rest of the tourney slate plays out, I’ll capture the official season ending standings and update the database and links to show these results.
———————————–
Now, how about the rest of the top 10? What did Syosset do to their rankings and what remains to play for?
So, there’s a couple of noteworthy rankings achievements to work towards besides the #1 title for the rest of the tour:
– the top 4 players on tour avoid the seedings flip
– More importantly … the top 8 players get protected seeds into the 16s at tier one events.
– less important; finishing in “the top 10” as a career achievement.
I know there’s lots of complaining about protected seeds on tour, especially in a tournament like Syosset with 49 guys in the draw and some players potentially having to play 3 matches to face a rested, seeded player in the 16s. I’d rather not get into it here, just noting that there were several reasons it was implemented and remains in place today: see this link http://www.proracquetballstats.com/…/guidry_post_roundof32.… for a good summary of why it was put in and how it actually *helps* lower ranked players instead of hurting them, both in terms of prize money and rankings points.
Nonetheless, while the protected seed system is in place, players really want to stay in the top 8.
Here’s how the Syosset event results shape the current top 10, and what may happen with the remaining non-Tier 1s:
– By virtue of making the semis this past weekend, #3 Alejandro Alex Landahas locked up #3 on the season. He has a 142 point lead over #4 and cannot be surpassed even if Parrilla plays tier 2s and wins them to replace his lowest scores. Landa finishes #3 for the second year running and had a nice solid run in the 2nd half of the season to get there.
– #4 Andree Parrilla should have guaranteed himself the #4 spot for year end by making the semis. This is a pretty remarkable one-season rise for a player; he finished ranked 11th last season, basically playing the tour just half time. This year though, he played all 9 events, made four quarterfinals and four semifinals and was a couple of unlucky points from doing even better. Twice this season Parrilla went out in the tie-breaker 11-10 or else maybe we’d be talking about him fishing 3rd.
– Andree’s lead over #5 Alvaro Beltran is only 107 points. And, Beltran missed the first event of the season, meaning he could possibly win a Tier 2 and add 120 points to his year end total to over take Andree for the #4 spot. But … Alvaro played (and won) the Lou Bradley Tier 2 earlier this season (see http://blog.proracquetballstats.com/…/lou-bradley-irt-tier…/ for the wrap-up of that event), meaning he’s already got a 120 tier2 win on the books, so I’m not sure how much Alvaro can improve upon his current #5 ranking with the remaining events. Alvaro did miss the first Tier 1 of the season, meaning in theory that’s a zero-point result he should be able to “replace” …
– With his early upset loss this past weekend, Daniel De La Rosa dropped to #6 on tour for the season, his lowest season-ending ranking since the 2012-13 season. He’s just 50 points behind Alvaro though for the #5 spot, and missed not one but two events on the year, so he could improve his year end standing markedly by playing (and winning) some of the remaining lower tier events. But I wonder what motivation there would be for DLR to go out of his way to play non-tier 1s just to try to improve from 6th to 5th. If he was planning on playing (say) Costa Rica, or Chihuahua, or the smaller events in Arkansas and Kansas already so be it, but with his likely focused on outdoor events and pickleball and family for the summer, we may not see him again on the IRT til the opener in August/September.
– There’s a huge gap from #6 to #7; 420 points, really showing how the guys in the 3-6 range have separated themselves from the pack, similarly to how the 1 & 2 guys have separated themselves even from #3.
– #7 Samuel Murray picked a great tournament to hold serve and make the quarters as per his seeding; he retains a 70 point lead over #8 Franco and is probably locked into that as a year end seeding.
– #8 Sebastian Franco was upset in Syosset, but so were all his possible competitors to the last coveted protected seeding #8 spot, meaning he’s in line to retain it heading into the next season. Franco also is a very active player, having two “extra” events on his resume already being dropped, so I’m not sure how much he could improve his ranking with the remaining events, or if he’d even travel to them (Franco skipped the Bolivian Grand Slam, likely for travel/family reasons, and traveling to Costa Rica/Chihuahua may also not be in the cards).
– #9 Rodrigo Montoya Solís was upset before the 16s thanks to a brutal draw (having to play Javier Mar to qualify for the main draw) and could not move from his #9 seeding in Syosset in the standings. Montoya missed a couple of tier 1s early in the season, but has himself played a couple of non-Tier1s this season, so i’m not sure if he can improve upon the 100 point gap between himself and the coveted #8 spot at this point without a deep dive into his full results on the season. Maybe if he goes to Chihuahua and wins it he could slip into the top 8.
– Both #10 Mario Mercado and #11 Jose Diaz got upset early in Syosset, costing them any shot at moving up. Despite his big run to the quarters as a #12 seed, Jake Bredenbeck remains locked into that year end seeding. #13 David Horn made the main draw but got no further and stays ranked #13 for the season.
– After #13, there’s a size-able gap to #14: Luis Conrrado Moscoso Serrudo, who has all his points from just two events (the Bolivia grand slam and a non Tier 1), and who seems unlikely to be seen on the regular tour at this point. I’d love to see him get some sponsors … but regular flights from Bolivia to the US are pretty grueling and we may not see him again til the US Open.
– The Guys ranked 15th-20th are all within 100 points of each other. Gerardo Franco Gonzalez, Jansen Allen, Lalo Portillo, Thomas Carter, Adam Manillaand Robert Collins. I’d describe all these guys similarly; they play nearly every IRT event, sometimes get upset early, and are still mostly lacking that one big run to the semis where they get a couple of solid wins in a row over top 8 guys that they’d need to really kick start their rankings. Some of these guys are moving up in the world (especially Portillo), while others are slipping (Allen), and it’ll be interesting to see how next season plays out for this crew.
————
So that’s it. Hope you enjoyed, and I hope i didn’t get any of this analysis egregiously wrong 🙂
I wanted to do a quick post reacting to Kane Waselenchuk‘s shock loss last weekend in the quarters of the Florida pro stop to Alvaro Beltran , and then talk about the implications heading into the season’s final event.
Kane’s loss is historically notable for a number of reasons.
– This is Kane’s first on-the-court, non injury or forfeit related loss since a semis Kansas City loss to Jose Rojas in 2013. Some may also point out a loss Kane took to Jake Bredenbeck in May of 2016, where Kane won the first two games, suffered an injury, then retired in the 5th. See this link for all of Kane’s career losses: http://rball.pro/8F1B46
I’d like to point out how crazy it is that we’re talking about a singular loss by a player in a one-on-one sport. Roger Federer is widely considerd the GOAT in Tennis; his best ever season by W/L was in 2006 when he went 92-5. That’s 5 losses in a year … while Kane doesn’t have 5 losses in the last decade. This situation kind of reminds me of the Russian wrestler Aleksandr Karelin, who went 13 years without losing (nor even dropping a point!) a match, and when he did give up a point it was so shocking that the officials went to video replay to confirm the referee’s decision.
– this loss breaks a 74 game winning streak; http://rball.pro/D30B92 . This was the 2nd longest ever Game winning streak, 2nd only to Kane’s 113-game winning streak that covered the whole of the 2016-17 season. This loss includes the first game loss Kane has suffered since the conversion to best-of-3 scoring format on tour.
– this loss also breaks an 83 match winning streak: http://rball.pro/569297 . This was the 3rd longest ever such streak (which skips fft losses), 3rd only to two longer streaks that Kane has achieved earlier in his career.
——————
I did not see the match live; only seeing texts and notifications after it had happened, so I went back and watched it on International Racquetball Tour‘s facebook page (tangent; what a great resource, having all these past matches available at the click of a button).
I watched it end to end, to see if there was evidence of an injury or some other root cause for this shock loss. Kane definitely seemed “off” his game, both in this match and against Thomas Carter in the 16s. And in a sport where the margin of error against top pros is usually measured in millimeters, it was enough to give Beltran (a very skilled shot-maker who can put balls away at any point when he can set his feet) the openings he needed to win.
I thought Kane really struggled with his serve on the day; I can’t recall the last time I saw him leave drive serves coming off the back wall as easy setups (which Beltran dutifully buried), and I can’t recall seeing him miss his lines or skip so many shots that he’d normally roll out.
I’m no pro, but I can tell very quickly when getting onto the court if i’m “on” or “off” that day, and sometimes there’d just nothing you can do about it except try to work around whatever struggles you’re having. These guys play day in, day out for 8 months out of the year and their livelihoods depend on maximizing their talent without allowing for “off days” really, so its hard to criticize one particular outing versus another.
———————
Implications for the 2018-19 race heading into the Syosset event.
Next weekend’s Syosset event is the final tier 1 of the season. However, there’s four additional IRT non-tier 1 events listed on the schedule right now: https://www.irt-tour.com/events/ . Two of those are Tier 2s, which give 120 points to the winner (no small amount of points, given the analysis below):
https://www.irt-tour.com/singles-rankings/ has the current rankings, post Florida rankings and Kane has a 134 point lead over Rocky Carson for the season. The Syosset event is “new” and there’s not corresponding points from last season to “defend,” so its winner takes all here on out.
With a 138 point lead, Rocky basically has to finish two “rounds” ahead of Kane while advancing sufficiently deep this coming weekend to keep the title lead. Here’s scenarios that could result in this situation:
– Rocky wins (400 points), Kane loses in semis (220 points): this is a net +180 for Rocky, enough to take over the title lead
– Rocky makes final (300 points), Kane loses in qtrs (150 points): net +150 for Rocky, enough to take the lead.
– Rocky makes semis (220 points), Kane loses in 16s (90 points): net +130 for rocky … NOT enough to take the lead.
Here’s where it’d get interesting. It is close enough between Kane and Rocky that some of these lesser tier events may come into play. Lets say Rocky or Kane comes out of New York trailing by less than 100 points: if you win a Tier 2, that’s 120 points. There’s two Tier 2s remaining (in Costa Rica and Mexico), a Tier 3 in Kansas, and a Tier 4 in Arkansas.
There are some limitations as to how many non tier 1s that top pros can go to. I don’t know the exact details. Kane went to the PAC Shootout earlier this spring (a Tier 4) and won it. Has Rocky gone to any non-tier 1s this season?
Things may be interesting down the stretch.