Hi everyone!

On Sunday March 21, 2021 I played a tennis tournament in Bern for girls less than 20 years old. I was the youngest (I’m 13 now) and lowest ranked.

In the semifinal I beat Fanny Andrey 6-1 7-5 and qualified for the final.

In the final I beat experienced player Noelle Kuhn (she’s R2 now in Switzerland, and according to TennisPocket will be R1 on the next April list) 6-3 7-5.

This tournament concludes my 3 weeks in Switzerland playing tennis tournaments. Overall, I won all 4 tennis tournaments and won all my 9 matches played.

The Swiss tennis ranking system is strange. They calculate a “competition rating” and add a “risk factor” that increases with the number of matches played. I think they do that to give an incentive to players to play more tournaments (so that they finance tennis clubs with their participation fees). But in fact a player who plays less but it ranked 7.0 + 0.3 = 7.3 is stronger than a player ranked 6.6 + 0.8 = 7.4, so I don’t think it’s fair to rank people by the total competition value + risk value.

In October 2020 my ranking was 7.381 + 0.540 = 7.920, which gave me a ranking of #253 (among all women in Switzerland) and therefore the “R2” level (from #145-#284). You get the “R1” level from #76-#144, and you go down to “R3” from #285-#554). If I had not played in March, my April ranking would have gone down to R3 because of the “risk factor” going down (few matches played). Now at least I played 9 matches and I won against girls rated higher than me (that’s if you count the competition value + risk factor), so let’s see what ranking I will get on April 1. In the October 1, 2020 list of G14 I was #11, and qualified to the main draw of the Swiss championship G14. If I had not played any tournaments in Switzerland in March, I would have gone down to #22. But since I did, I hope to be back to the main draw, or even better in the top 10.

I’m back to training.

Francesca Saroli