Tennis world en n 49 Tennis World issue 49 | Page 18

season started with Justin
Henin holding the top spot
before Maria Sharapova,
Ana lvanovic, Serena
Williams and Jelena
Jankovic occupied it in
succession.
This year, after Angelique
Kerber lost it having not won
a title in more than 13
months since the 2016 Us
WTA: a 5
stars
season.
What's
next
Alessandro Mastroluca
“It is no exception to the law
(of the diminishing marginal
utility) that the more good
music a man hears, the
stronger is his taste for it
likely to become”. Alfred
Marshall wasn't thinking to
demand of tennis when he
expressed his law in the
Principles of Economics in
1890. But, according to it,
fans acquire desire and
competences match after
match, and accumulating
experiences they starts to
appreciate subtleties and
tacitcal complexities much
more comfortably than
casual viewers.
Such a distinction could help
to find an answer to a
question that cyclically
returns in women's tennis
during transitional seasons
like 2017 when for the
second time since the
computer rankings was
introduced in 1975, five
different players
interchanged as the World
No.1 in 12 months. It had
happened only in 2008, a
Open, Serena Williams took
it briefly before her
celebrated maternity leave.
Then Karolina Pliskova
reached it after Wimbledon,
despite a second round exit,
with no Grand Slam titles to
offer, and lost the privilege
after the Us Open. Garbine
Muguruza gave Spain the
chance to express
simultaneously the ATP and
WTA No.1s for the first time
in history and went to Beijing
to test her conditions and
other reasons that money
just can buy. Finally, Simona
Halep became the 25th No.1
in the computer-rankings
era.
The question can't have
anything to do with the
ranking system: the best 16
principle can't be good only