PRS has entered the year-end rankings for the World Racquetball Tour. Congratulations to Jake Bredenbeck on claiming the 2018 WRT year end #1 title, wresting it away from 2017’s champ Bobby Horn, who finished #3. Alejandro Cardona, the 2015 and 2016 champ, missed one of the events and got upset early in another and finished 9th in the abbreviated season.
No other Player of the Year awards will be given for 2018, as per the WRT commissioner Pablo Fajre.
2018 was a small season for the WRT, hosting just 3 sanctioned events. Four players played in all three events on the year, and another 7 made two of the three tourneys. Jake won on the back of a win and a finals appearance, just pipping Andree Parrilla for #2 (he had a win and a quarter) and Horn for #3 (three semis appearances in 3 tourneys). #4 Jaime Martell Racquetball had a win and two round of 16 losses on the season.
After a outage earlier this month, the WRT’s website is back but has little details for the coming season. Details will be coming though for the new year soon. Contrary to rumor, the WRT is not dead, and we look forward to seeing what they come up with in 2019.
No surprise who #1 is. The intrigue starts a bit later.
Happy Holidays! During this little break in the tournament action, here’s some content for everyone to argue about. 🙂 This is my current Men’s World Top 50. Thanks to the ever-widening popularity of the sport, multiple tours and the inability for some top players to play the International Racquetball Tour regularly, the IRT rankings do not really give a full picture of the current state of the world game. This attempts to do so.
I have rankings divided into “groups” so this isn’t a hard and fast 1-50 necessarily, as I’ll explain as we go.
Usual caveats: this is my opinion. No offense intended if you think someone is too high or too low. This is for entertainment purposes only. Its mostly stat/match result based. Its tough to do pure 1-50 b/c of game style match-ups (i.e., a guy in the 30s always beats a guy in the 20s for some reason, but can’t beat anyone in-between). Also, one big win over a top 10 player does not make you a top 10 player … i’ve noted solid wins for players below the top of this list, but look for consistent results over and again before rising up the ranks.
I hope you enjoy!
————————
1. Kane Waselenchuk Large Gap to #2: Kane is head and shoulders ahead of anyone else.
2. Rocky Carson Smaller Gap to #3-6; Rocky still has a lead over the next group and continues to demonstrate it on the court.
I have these guys 3-6, and they’re constantly changing positions. Up until the Mexico Open I had Landa above Montoya, but then Montoya got him H2H. Honestly, I think they’re a coin flip for #3 and #4 right now. Meanwhile, DLR is 3-6 H2H against Landa across senior events so i’ve got him just below Landa … just beat Parrilla and Montoya to win in Monterrey, but lost to Montoya at Mexican Nats earlier this year. Parrilla beat Landa at the past US Open but for me day in, day out is slightly below these other three. On any given Sunday though, these four can all put losses on each other. It is not a surprise that these four were then fou semi-finalists in Monterrey earlier this month.
Moscoso has wins over the guys ranked 3-6, but just lost to Montoya at Worlds and lost to Murray at US Open. I know some people think he should be higher (ahem, Sudsy 🙂 ) but i’ve got him just a hair below. Mar is an enigma; he’s demonstrated the ability to beat all the guys ranked 3-6 and has in the last couple of years, but not quite consistently enough to break into that group. Murray has wins over Montoya, Landa and Moscoso in the last few events; he’s becoming much more consistent winner as of late. Lastly you have Alvaro, who has been showing his age but then turns around and trounces the likes of DLR in Portland. He’s still a tough out, week in and week out but has been consistently slipping down this ranking over the past couple of years.
One last comment on my current top 10: a quick breakdown by country:
2 Canadians
1 Bolivian
1 American
6 Mexicans
And the one American player is nearly 40. The next generation of dominance in our sport is coming from south of the US border.
I call this group the “retired but could still make noise if they weren’t” group. Jose retired after three straight finishes at #5 on tour, and he didn’t retire because he was losing suddenly. Mejia hasn’t played in a while, enough that we may want to remove him, but when we last saw him playing WRT events he was beating consistently those ranked just behind him in the next grouping. Marco Rojas retired after two 7th place finishes on tour, and has winning career records against DLR and Landa, and against guys in the next grouping (Horn, Jake), so its no surprise he’s still this high. Lastly Tony Carson consistently demonstrates he can continue to win, with wins over DLR and Parrilla in the last two IRT events he’s entered.
Here’s where it starts getting tough. This group here is a mix of international players we rarely see, leading World Racquetball Tour players, and mid-ranged IRT players. You may argue that I have Polo too high; but every time he plays an IRT event he makes noise. He’s coming off an elbow injury and is 35 though, so he may be slipping. Horn has some wins against higher ranked players and won 2018 US Nationals in a draw that included Jake, Pratt and Jose Rojas. Pratt has some h2h wins over players in this group, over Beltran, and beat Mar en route to the 2017 Pan Am final. Franco has recent wins over Landa and DLR, and has a solid argument to be higher. Mercado too; he’s 2-2 vs Murray career but just 1-5 against Horn and this feels about right. Iwaasa took several years off, but has not lost his touch, taking Mercado to the edge at Worlds twice and making the Finals in the WRT Canada event in a draw that featured several guys in this group. Keller Vargas won the 2018 Pan Ams over Montoya and Horn, but lost to Franco at Worlds; I used to have him much higher and wonder if he’d be a top 10 player if he played the tour regularly. Lastly Jake; he’s one of the few players to have wins over Kane, DLR and Rocky ever, but has struggled to beat players in this group or the grouping above lately and has been slightly slipping down in this ranking after having some early IRT season struggles.
Croft is pretty much retired, so not much recent to go on; he beat Horn but lost to Jake in a singles event in Denver earlier this year. Estrada, Natera and Ochoa are all rising Mexican players to watch out for. Estrada beat Landa at Mexican world selection event, just beat Beltran in Monterrey and has played Montoya tough twice this fall. Natera has recent wins over Mar and others in this grouping. Ochoa has recent wins over Beltran, Parrilla, and Mar and may very well be higher. Cardona used to be in the next group up as the reigning king of the hill in the WRT but has been losing ground to the likes of Horn and Jake and the youngsters rising up in Mexico over the past year or so.
Sudsy made the semis of the US Open last year by beating Allen, then beat Diaz but lost to Jake in an WRT event so this seems about right (thought I wouldn’t argue if you thought he was higher). Allen has had some solid wins against the likes of Beltran, Mercado, Murray lately, and beat Diaz in the Laurel season opener, and may be a bit higher. Lastly you have the younger Rojas, who has consistently beaten players below here but not too many above and who has the game to start breaking through and moving up.
This grouping could benefit from more head to head meetings; would Allen beat the likes of Estrada, Natera and Ochoa if they played? Here’s hoping for some more IRT events held in Mexico to get more full draws.
32. Cliff Swain; even though he hasn’t played in more than a year, I still think he could beat anyone listed below here. I’m hoping he plays some more pro events and tries to break some of Ruben Gonzalez‘s more amazing feats of reaching the end stages of pro tourneys at advanced ages.
As with the group above, its tougher in this area to really rank guys sequentially because there’s not a lot of h2h to go on. Gerardo Franco probably has an argument to be higher, with recent wins over Sebastian Franco, over DLR and Jake in Cincy18, etc. I’ve got Lalo just ahead of Sebastian on account of his h2h win at Junior Worlds, but Lalo has lost multiple times to Gerardo Franco in the last year so this trio feels right. Martell has great wins (Landa, Jake, Horn), but then also has early tourney losses in recent WRT and amateur events. Garay has wins over guys in this grouping and against the likes of Parrilla and might be higher. Alonso plays the guys in this grouping tough, has wins over Parrilla in the past but needs more consistency.
Landeryou has h2h wins over both the next two guys below him hence the ranking, but not much else to go on. Reid has a win over Mercado and a US Open title in Men’s open in a draw that featured many players in this group or just below, so this ranking makes sense. Green has reigned over Canada racquetball for two decades but may be retiring and most recently lost to Landeryou at Canadian Nationals. Longoria has some wins over the likes of GFranco and Estrada and may have a case to be a bit higher. Lastly Manilla just took out Mercado in Laurel18 and has had a promising start to the new season, so this seems about right.
Herrera is a long-time IRT vet, just took the 2018 US Open Men’s Open draw over Acuna in the final and beating several Honorable Mention players along the way. Acuna has some solid wins recently (Portillo, Camacho, even Horn at the US Open) and may have a good argument to be higher. Rios doesn’t have much to go on recently but has good wins internationally in the past. Garcia is the 16U reigning world champ who has beaten a few of the HM players in limited adult tourneys. Mollet is the Cuban #1 who makes noise whenever he enters (beat Camacho h2h at Central American games in 2018 for example). Camacho has some wins over higher players (Fernandez, Allen) but has losses to players right in this group so this feels about right. Bousquet had some solid wins over HM players in 2017.
And it should be noted, there’s a slew of HM players below who might very well be in this group, or slightly higher. In fact, as I typed this I wondered if any number of the below players shouldn’t be in this 40-50 range.
Honorable Mentions: I can’t tag more than 50 players per post, so nobody below is tagged, but here’s the players just outside the top 50 by category:
———————— HM Int’l players: Fernando Kurzbard, Jose Daniel Ugalde, Juan Salvatierra, Francisco Troncoso, Andres Gomez, Teobaldo Fumero, Luis Perez, Christian Wer, Hiroshi Shimizu, Lee Connell, Set Cubillos, David Garcia
HM Mexican Players: Edson Martinez, Rodrigo Garay, Rodrigo Rodrigez, Alejandro Almada, Edwin Galicia, Miguel Rodriguez Jr., Daniel Neri, Erick Cuevas Fernandez, Alan Palomino
HM USA IRT Regulars: Thomas Carter, Robert Collins, Scott McClellan, Troy Warigon, John Wolfe
HM USA periodic players: Taylor Knoth, Nick Montalbano, Majeed Shaheen, Matthew Majxner, Maurice Miller, Brad Schopiery, Luis Avila, Brent Walters, Tim Prigo
HM USA Up and comers: Kevin Vasquez, Erik Garcia, Jordan Barth, Nick Riffel, Mauricio Zelada, Wayne Antone IV, Justus Benson, Danny Lavely, Lukas Le,Dylan Pruitt, Kyle Ulliman, A.J. Fernandez, Sam Bredenbeck, Sunji Spencer
HM retired pro players: Alex Ackermann, Gilberto De Los Rios, Kris Odegard, Ricardo Monroy, Anthony Herrera, Shai Manzuri, Javier Moreno ——————————
Phew. Hopefully I didn’t miss anyone; let me know in the comments if you think I did. Look forward to your commentary. Happy Holidays!
Is the current ranking system unfair to Waselenchuk?
On 11/20/18, the 12-month rolling IRT rankings shifted enough points away from last season to account for a pretty monumental set of movements in the rankings table: Alejandro Landa ascended to #1 for the first time ever, while the sports most dominant player Kane Waselenchuk fell to #6.
Kane’s descent was due to two primary factors:
1. he missed a number of events in the second half of the 2017-18 season, and
2. There was a sudden drop in the number of events in the first half of the 2018-19 season.
When the IRT posted the update to facebook, A predictable firestorm of comments arose, criticizing the rankings and the ranking system. I weighed in, pondering initially why it mattered (other than tourney seeding of course) what the rankings were in November, but many believe a different ranking system is needed.
Here are some Ranking system alternatives with some personal analysis. I tried to emulate all the solid suggestions on the facebook thread from various players and commenters. The working spreadsheet is available at Google Spreadsheets here. I’ll just list the top 10 players ranked though I extended the logic down to the top 20 running players or so throughout the last 2+ seasons.
Important Caveats to the below:
I have only included points earned in Tier 1s and Grand Slams. Some players (especially Landa and Parrilla) in reality have a decent amount more points thanks to success in non-Tier 1 events that still remain on their books.
I have also only included the core point totals earned per tournament, not bothering to figure out the slight point additions based on games won for simplicity. In other words; if you made the semis I gave you 220 points though you may have lost the semis in a breaker and thus really earned 222 or 224 points.
There’s a couple of players outside the top 10 with points discrepancies I cannot reconcile with this simplistic logic. Its likely also due to playing non-tier 1 events. In the grand scheme of this analysis though, it shouldn’t matter.
Current Ranking System: utilizes a 12-month rolling calendar schedule that expires points the 366th day after the event occurs on an automatic basis. It also drops all low results to “baseline” the rankings at 9 events. More is available describing the logic at this IRT link and at the Current online rankings.
The exact rankings as of 11/20/18 that started all of this:
player
Points
Rank
Landa, Alejandro
2116.3
1
Carson, Rocky
2112.18
2
De La Rosa, Daniel
1986.16
3
Franco, Sebastian
1674.15
4
Murray, Samuel
1628.03
5
Waselenchuk, Kane
1500.42
6
Mercado, Mario
1496.02
7
Beltran, Alvaro
1490.01
8
Parrilla, Andree
1432.15
9
Allen, Jansen
1152.02
10
Issue with this system: Kane is too low given he’s currently riding a 66 match winning streak, penalizes players too much for missing time with injury.
Alternative #1: just use Season To Date Rankings. The current season has had just two events thanks to several events held in the fall of last year falling off the schedule. The current Season-to-date rankings are:
Player
Points
Rank
Carson, Rocky
840
1
Waselenchuk, Kane
800
2
De La Rosa, Daniel
600
3
Parrilla, Andree
590
4
Landa, Alejandro
520
5
Franco, Sebastian
520
6
Murray, Samuel
480
7
Mercado, Mario
390
8
Diaz, Jose
390
9
Bredenbeck, Jake
270
10
So, the top of this table looks normal enough: Rocky Carson is above Kane, but Kane missed the first event of the year. Thanks to a hot start and a semis appearance at the US Open, Andree Parrilla is ranked 4th season-to-date. Alvaro Beltran, a mainstay in the top 10 for a decade, is nowhere to be seen (he missed the first event, and was upset early in the second event of the season). Landa drops to #5 here even though he has the most wins on tour outside of Kane in the last two years.
Issue with this system: not enough data, too much recency bias.
Alternative #2: Rank based just on last 9 events played. This system excludes any missed events and totals the points from the last 9 times the player got on the court. In some cases, we had to go back to the beginning of the 2016-17 season to get 9 events.
Player
Points
Rank
Waselenchuk, Kane
4300
1
Carson, Rocky
2400
2
Landa, Alejandro
2300
3
De La Rosa, Daniel
2230
4
Franco, Sebastian
1760
5
Parrilla, Andree
1740
6
Pratt, Charlie
1670
7
Murray, Samuel
1620
8
Beltran, Alvaro
1540
9
Mercado, Mario
1490
10
This system obviously shows how dominant Kane is; by giving everyone the benefit of the doubt and removing all their missed events, all players are showing their absolute best possible results. Two notably high players here are again Parrilla (who we had to dip well into the 2016-17 season to get the 9th played event) and Charlie Pratt, who required us to go back more than two calendar years to find enough played events to qualify. Even then some top 20 players don’t have 9 events played (specifically guys like Rodrigo Montoya and Javier Mar).
Issues with this system: does not reward “touring” players, over-rewards players who miss a number of events, goes back “too far” to get results in some cases.
Alternative #3: Just rank based on the last 9 running events, eliminating Calendar dates.
Player
Points
Rank
Carson, Rocky
2100
1
Landa, Alejandro
2080
2
De La Rosa, Daniel
1920
3
Murray, Samuel
1620
4
Franco, Sebastian
1610
5
Waselenchuk, Kane
1500
6
Mercado, Mario
1490
7
Beltran, Alvaro
1390
8
Parrilla, Andree
1320
9
Allen, Jansen
1170
10
This system keeps tournaments hanging on irrespective of the date, so should address the complaints about “not having tournaments to defend points.” So to get the last 9 running Tier 1s and/or Grand Slams we just sum the points dating back to the 11/2/2017 event.
However, this ranking almost exactly mirrors the Current rankings. Rocky and Landa are flipped at the top, Sebastian Franco and Samuel Murray are flipped at the 4/5 spot, and Kane is still at #6. In fact, the players in spots #7 through #18 are also identical in this system to the current 12-month rolling calendar. Why? Because all these players are playing nearly all the events, rarely missing events, and thus the point totals are basically the same.
Issue with this system: Does not address the issue; Still penalizes Kane for missing so much time in early 2018.
Alternative #4: Total Points, running 2-year calendar. This system is basically the same system as is in place now, except it uses a 2-year rolling calendar instead of one. I dropped each player’s two lowest scores (to emulate dropping just one low score for the current 12-month calendar season) and then ranked them:
Player
total Points
Rank
Carson, Rocky
4890
1
Waselenchuk, Kane
4700
2
Beltran, Alvaro
3160
3
Landa, Alejandro
3110
4
De La Rosa, Daniel
2750
5
Franco, Sebastian
2570
6
Murray, Samuel
2490
7
Parrilla, Andree
2190
8
Mercado, Mario
1820
9
Allen, Jansen
1570
10
I think this is actually a pretty good ranking, taking into account results in events played plus tour event participation. Rocky is 1, Kane is 2, so Kane’s missed time penalizes him slightly but not overtly so. Its important to remember, not only did Kane miss the four events to injury in early 2018, he’s also missed four OTHER events in the last two running calendar years for various reasons. For similar reasons (missed events), both Landa and Parrilla are lower than they might be, while Beltran may be slightly higher than he should be, based on recent rankings.
Issue with this system: none really for me.
Alternative #5: Keeping points for tourneys that drop off Calendar. Kane noted he’s dropped so far because there’s been a lack of tournaments this fall for him to “defend” points from last season. So I adjusted the points sums to go back further in time to capture more tournaments. The numbers below basically are a sum of all points earned from every tournament that happened past the 2017 US Open, totaling 11 events in all:
Player
Points
Rank
Carson, Rocky
2700
1
Landa, Alejandro
2300
2
Waselenchuk, Kane
2300
3
De La Rosa, Daniel
2230
4
Franco, Sebastian
1980
5
Murray, Samuel
1860
6
Beltran, Alvaro
1690
7
Mercado, Mario
1640
8
Allen, Jansen
1480
9
Parrilla, Andree
1320
10
In this system, Rocky is #1, then Kane and Landa are tied for #2 (I put Landa 2nd because throughout all of this Landa has a number of points from non-Tier 1 events that slightly elevate his ranking over his peers). The rest of the rankings 4-20 more or less mirror the current rankings that expire points after the 365th day.
I like this option too; it seems to address the issue of tournaments falling off the calendar in a rather simple way.
Issue with this system: i’m not sure this system would “protect” any players besides Kane who go out with injury. Kane wins a lot of points per event played and can “make up” several tournaments worth of points for a normal tour player each time. If someone ranked in the 10-15 range missed a significant amount of time … they’d be buried in the rankings.
Other Alternatives explored:
I looked at average points earned in tournaments for each player for a one-year and two-year rolling period. The problem with using an average is that missed tournaments basically destroy the average. Kane ranks just 9th in average tourney points earned in the last calendar year, while Landa drops to 5th if you extend that average to two years. Both results do not seem valid.
Conclusion: I think the simplest solution may just be to expand the system from a rolling 1-year to a rolling 2-year calendar (Alternative #4). This will smooth out periods of absence for Kane and reward a longer period of excellence overall.
This suggestion also has the added benefit of representing a simple additional burden on the tour (and John Scott) to maintain. Any more complex system might be too much of a burden to maintain in an ongoing fashion.
However … I do believe that the end of season rankings should only take into account the points earned in that season. It would make no sense to have last season’s results impact this season’s end-of-season rankings. So perhaps this is all just an exercise to find a better “seeding” system that does a better job of smoothing out the rankings to better indicate at any given point in time who is ranked where. I am not advocating at this time to really change the way the rankings are done for the purposes of declaring a season-ending champ.
If you have different suggestions, I can run other scenarios as well. Feel free to comment or drop me a line.
On 4/28/18, minutes after winning the final event of the 2017-18 season, Kane shocked the racquetball world by announcing that he was “90%” sure he was retiring from full-time touring.
There’s all sorts of chatter here and there on this subject on facebook right now in the rball community, a lot of it inexplicably negative. So how about some positivity in reflecting on what an amazing career he’s had to date?
I’ll say this, from my perspective as the guy who tracks allof this data for www.proracquetballstats.com: Kane’s dominance is the reason many of the cool reports on the site exist, and I’ll be bummed to see him go and stop chasing records. There are not too many people in the professional sports landscape who get to say that they won their last match. As for the future, as a fan of the pro sport and someone who is always trying to predict who beats who in head to head match-ups, I’m also excited to see the next era of the sport, to see who steps up next year to challenge Rocky for the next title. It was always an inevitability that the current elder statesmen of the tour were going to step aside; i’m just surprised by who bowed out first and when. I sincerely hope he changes his mind and chases a 13th title (and beyond).
Its quite a few months away from the start of the 2018-19 season, and 90% isn’t 100%, so this whole post may be premature … but going under the assumption that we’ve seen the last of Kane full time on tour, I thought it’d be fun to put out some fun stats on his career. Every one of these figures can be found by running a report on the website, but if you have any questions how to see these data points for yourself, i’m always available.
Pro Tour Titles: – 12 pro tour titles; 6 more than the next closest competitor (Cliff Swain‘s 6 pro titles)
Some Tournament title stats: – 110 pro tournament wins, 39 more than the next closest competitor (Cliff’s 71 “known” tour wins) – Tournament win percentage of 68.3% for his career. To put this in perspective, if 68.3% was his MATCH won/loss percentage he’d still be top 15 of all time. – He reached the finals in 74.5% of the tournaments he ever entered. Think about that fact; 3 out of every 4 tournaments for his career featured him in the final. – He won the 7th pro event he ever entered (same as Cliff and Sudsy Monchik in terms of fastest ever). – He owns 13 US Open titles, triple the closest competitor.
Wins and Losses – “Retires” with a career record of 553-50, a .917 winning percentage. – He’s so far ahead of the 2nd best player in terms of career W/L percentage (Marty Hogan at .844) that he could lose 50 straight matches and still be in the lead. Fifty. This to me is the most amazing stat about Kane’s career.
– 13 of his 50 career tour losses were forfeits where he never even took the court (either through injury or missing a tournament after the draw had been made). So some would like to say his career W/L record is even more impressive than it already appears. – Most wins against him: Cliff Swain, who finished 9-13 head to head against Kane. – He’s had just 12 losses in the last decade, most by forfeit. – There’s just one player in the history of the tour who has a winning record against him: John Ellis , 2-1. – He’s 73-3 for his career against Rocky Carson, who was his closest competitor for most of his reign. – the last on the court loss he suffered was to Jake Bredenbeck in May 2016, retiring in the 5th game after winning the first two and suffering an injury. – The last on the court, non-fft related loss was to Jose Rojas in Sept 2013. Prior to that you have to go back to Jan 2009, a semis loss to Alvaro Beltran. That’s nearly a decade ago.
Streaks – Won 19 consecutive tournaments entered between Jan 2009 and Jan 2011. – He owns the top six consecutive tournaments won streak of all time, each of which is in the double digits.
– Compiled a 134 match on the court winning streak, between Jan 2009 and Jan 2012. – Also had additional such streaks of 108 matches and he retires with an intact 61 match winning streak on the court. He owns the longest three such match winning streaks in pro tour history (Marty’s great 1976-77 season is the fourth longest winning streak).
– Completed two fully undefeated seasons (forfeits or otherwise); 2009-10, 2016-17; the first such seasons ever done on tour. – Several other seasons, when accounting for forfeit losses, were also “undefeated” seasons.
– He completed a perfect season in terms of games won/lost, going 85-0 in games played during the 2016-17 season. – This was part of a streak of 113 consecutive games won between May 2016 and Oct 2017. For me, this might be his most amazing accomplishment on the court. He was so dominant for so long that he didn’t even drop a game for a year and a half.
Miscellany – Career donut count: 130 given, 3 taken. During tournaments, I’m often asked to recall the individual donuts he’s received in lieu of match losses. (In case you’re wondering; Swain gave him a donut in 2001, again in 2004, then Rojas gave him a donut in 2012 before getting donutted himself in the second game. – He won a title in the last 15 seasons in which he competed.
– He owns the top 7 most dominant finals performances in terms of points conceded, and 19 of the top 22. – He owns the top 17 most dominant tournaments in history (and 33 of top 34), once winning a tourney and conceding just 19 points in 12 games across 4 matches. – Just about the only records he doesn’t own in the history of the tour are longevity/age based, ones that I’d have no doubt he could eventually eclipse if he were to continue playing deep into his 40s.
So, that’s some fun stats for you. I hope you enjoy, and long live King Kane.
