Mana Games

[Erik]

What is the effect of playing in all the tournaments vs playing in less tournaments?

[manutoo]

Hello,

it depends... but mainly, it costs more to go to all tournaments, and lower your available time to rest & train, so your player might get better more slowly.

[Curtis]

They will also probably peak lower. With the game set to the hardest level, my players' skills begin to deteriorate when they get within about twenty points of their potentials. I have to spend weeks doing nothing but training to keep them from sliding back to mediocrity.

Also, if you are participating in both singles and doubles your player will quickly melt away into a small brunette puddle of exhaustion. At that point his/her mounting injuries will enforce rest of a non-productive type.

What seems to work best for me is to play three or four weeks in a row (including qualifiers), then take three or four weeks off to train. For some reason (usually failing to take into account the qualifiers), I always seems to end up with one less week of training than I planned on. Still, my goal is 26 tournaments per year.

Does anyone else have a system for determining how much time away from tournaments is optimum? And does anyone know how many tournaments the average real life ATP or WTA player participates in?

[Rob4590]

I tend to go about scheduling a little differently.

First (if their ranking is high enough) they will automatically play all four slams, and all nine masters series (remember I only play the men's version)

Then they need at least 5 more good tournaments (for their ranking) so I will play either one or both weeks before the Australian Open, then either one or two events between Oz and the two US IMS events. Maybe one extra clay event before the 3 IMS, then one grass warm up before Wimbledon (UK Open).
One more warm up before Cinci/Montreal/US Open, then either one or two more events before the final two masters series.

I usually try to keep a week off between most of the events they play if possible.

So my guys play 20-23 events a year once they rank in the top 100.

For my user character, he plays only every 3-4 weeks for the first year (usually less since I tend to get him injured by overtraining lol) then slowly moves into the top level by the middle / end of year 2.


EDIT: In real life, it varies between about 18-20 (Fed and Nadal / Ivanovic and Henin (before she retired) up to 30-35 (Davydenko / Jankovic). Then you have the Williams sisters (and Sharapova) who play only about 12-14 events.

[manutoo]

And does anyone know how many tournaments the average real life ATP or WTA player participates in?

just look on official website :
http://www.atptennis.com/3/en/rankings/ ... efault.asp
There's a "Tourns Played" column.

[Curtis]

It is interesting that the top three played the fewest tournaments, while those in the bottom half played the most. On the whole it looked like 26 tournaments was a fair objective.

Thank you Rob and especially Manutoo for finding that.