All Wins May Not Be The Same

A few weeks ago, I had told my coach, R., that I had beat a really good player but had barely squeaked it out. He told me that there is no such thing as barely winning and that a win is a win. I accepted that and it made me feel like I had accomplished a little more.

But since then, I have come to realize there are some differences between matches with close scores and matches with lopsided scores. Not only can there be a difference it how it affects your psychology, but there can be a difference in how it affects your body. After I won the match that I told R. about, it took so much out of me (it was the third match of four that I played in a tournament) that I was too exhausted and scattered to win my next match. If I had won easily, I might have had a different result in my next match. Or at least I would have had a better chance of winning if I didn’t feel as spent.

Also, on the ladder, matches with lopsided scores like 6-1, 6-0 will move you up much higher than matches with close scores or matches that go three sets. In the first round I played on the ladder, I won two matches, won a challenge against a player ten rungs higher than me, and won against a player who was a lot lower than me who challenged me. So I moved up ten rungs. In the second round, I once again beat both players on my rung, challenged a guy ten rungs up, and won all of them. So I expected to move up ten rungs. Another player on the ladder had told me that if I won both my regular matches and the challenge match, that I would move to the rung of the player I had challenged. So I expected to move up ten rungs again. But I didn’t; I only moved up one rung. When I asked the ladder coordinator why that happened, he told me that I had won with close scores rather than lopsided results so there was no blowout score that he could use to move me up higher. Also, he had mistakenly placed the guy I challenged about ten rungs too high.

Now, is that fair to consider a match with a lopsided score as qualitatively better than one that is close? Well, I’ve been told that the USTA does the same thing when evaluating whether a player in an NTRP leagues should be moved up. If a 4.0 player is beating other players easily, they will tell him he needs to move up to 4.5, or so I’ve been told. And now that I know that the ladder works that way, it’s hard for me to say it’s not fair because the results of the matches are being evaluated by the rules that are in place.

I do think it tends to work against players like me, though. I have noticed that I have a lot of close scores against players at my level, players lower than my level, and players higher than my level, but win a lot of those close scores. So what I probably tend to do is keep it close throughout a match, and pull it out at the end. I also am very ready to play long, grueling contests, and, in fact, expect that from the outset. This is a different style from someone who tends to dominate from the beginning and is ready for it to be over quickly. I think if you put a grinder against a dominator, the grinder will have the advantage, because he is ready for the long haul from the start.

So there are circumstances in which some wins are definitely different from others. Is it justifiable? I don’t know; there are arguments for and against. Is it fair? Arguably, it is as long as all players know that’s the way it will be before they agree to play under those rules. But then again, players may not have a substantially equal forum with different rules available to them.