Talk:Bill Scanlon

Notable Wins?
At this moment, the "Career" section of Bill Scanlon's Wikipedia entry contains the following paragraph:


 * "During his career, Scanlon would log wins over players ranked #1 including McEnroe (3 times), Bjorn Borg, Ivan Lendl, Andre Agassi, Mats Wilander, Ilie Nastase, and Boris Becker. Other notable wins include Guillermo Vilas, Vitas Gerulaitis, and Stan Smith."

Both sentences are questionable and problematic. The first of the two should be clarified, and the second should be fixed (probably by moving mention of Smith to the previous sentence).

(Unfortunately, I do not know enough to be able to fix the two sentences myself. I could only spot the probable errors.)

Concerning the first sentence, how many of those players — if any — were ranked number one in the world at the time that Scanlon beat them? The sentence presently says that every single one of them was ranked #1 when Scanlon beat him, but that almost certainly cannot actually be the case.

For starters, the last time Ilie Năstase was ranked #1 was June 2, 1974, but Scanlon did not even turn pro until 1976! (Năstase did climb back to #3 in the world, briefly, near the end of 1976, but he never made it all the way to #1 after June of 1974.)

Of course, Scanlon could have played Năstase while he (Scanlon) was still an amateur, but it seems unlikely that he would have played him between August 23, 1973 and June 2, 1974, when he (Năstase) was #1. (And even more unlikely — if he had won — that whoever edited this page previously would not have mentioned such a striking and McEnroe-like fact explicitly if it were true!) Scanlon would have had to face and defeat Năstase either during his senior year in high school or during the summer before his freshman year of college.

True, McEnroe entered several pro tournaments during his senior year in high school, and did face Năstase in one of them, losing in 3 sets. And it is possible that Scanlon likewise faced Năstase while still in high school (or just out), and fared even better than McEnroe did (notwithstanding Năstase being younger and closer to the peak of his powers). But it seems far more likely that Scanlon's first victory over Năstase came some years later, when Năstase was no longer anywhere near #1.

(Or at least was no higher than #3. He was ranked #7 in the world as of June 14, 1976, #3 as of December 12, 1976, and #7 again as of July 2, 1977.  (The ATP's Web site does not report rankings for most players at other dates in between these three. ) His world ranking started to fall steadily after August of 1977, and his #3 ranking as of December of 1976 was the first time he had been ranked that high, or anywhere higher than #6, since 1974.)

If Scanlon's only wins over Năstase were the "two wins over Ilie Nastase in early 1977" that the article presently mentions, then the sentence listing Năstase as a "player ranked #1" whom Scanlon beat is not merely misleading, but flat-out false! Năstase was not ranked #1 at the time of either of those wins!

Likewise, the first time Andre Agassi reached #1 in the world was April 10, 1995, but the article implies that Scanlon retired after the end of the 1989 season ("He continued to compete through 1989 . . . ."). Which means that, whenever Scanlon played and defeated Agassi, Agassi was not yet #1 in the world.

Furthermore, Stan Smith is listed in the second sentence ("Other notable wins") but not the first ("wins over players ranked #1"), even though he was #1 in the world for both 1971 (tie) and 1972!

Since the first sentence clearly includes players who were only former, or future, #1s when Scanlon beat them, Smith's name ought to be included in that sentence too.

So, then, were any of the players mentioned in the first sentence ranked #1 in the world when Scanlon beat them?

I can rewrite the first sentence to make it true as easily as anyone else can, but the way one would want to word it depends on the answer to this question. If at least one of those players was ranked #1 when Scanlon beat him, then one would want to say something like "current, former or future." (Better still, if someone has an accurate and complete list of players Scanlon beat who were ranked #1 at the time that Scanlon beat them, those players should be listed and treated in a separate sentence from the one listing former and future number ones. Beating someone who is currently #1 in the world is a significantly more noteworthy accomplishment, rating a separate sentence.  Which of course should come first.)  Otherwise, one should simply say "former or future," or "players who had previously been or would later be," or something like that.

If no one else weighs in with additional information, I shall go ahead and edit the paragraph myself, to read as follows:


 * "During his career, Scanlon would log wins over eight players who had been or would be ranked #1 in the world, including Stan Smith, Ilie Nastase (twice), Bjorn Borg, John McEnroe (3 times), Ivan Lendl, Mats Wilander, Boris Becker, and Andre Agassi. Other notable victories over top players include wins over Guillermo Vilas (career high #2) and Vitas Gerulaitis (career high #3), as well as Adriano Panatta (career high #4), Pat Cash (career high #4), and Harold Solomon (career high #5)."

(I have rearranged the names in the first sentence so that they are listed in the order of their becoming world #1. I am assuming that he had only the two wins already mentioned in the article over Ilie Năstase (only two are mentioned over McEnroe as well, but evidently he had a total of three), and that the two wins over Năstase and three over McEnroe are the only instances of multiple victories over a big-shot.

Panatta and Cash were just as impressive in their respective days as Gerulaitis, if not Vilas (though Panatta's really hot period in singles was much shorter than the others'), so I added them to the second sentence. Harold Solomon was not as impressive or formidable as these others (despite his peak ranking), but I added him as well to avoid an argument. Every one of them was in the top 5 at some point in his career, if not when Scanlon beat him. (I just looked up all of these rankings on the ATP's Web site.)

And I just discovered that Panatta's career high ranking was #4, and was achieved 6 days before the start of the 1976 US Open, making it impossible for him to have had a ranking of #3 — as the page presently reports — when he lost to Scanlon in the second round. I shall correct that error momentarily.)

However, that wording will not do justice to Scanlon's accomplishments **IF** in fact at least one of those players was actually already, and still, #1 in the world on the day(s) that Scanlon beat him. So if that is the case, I hope that someone else will chime in and indicate such!

References:

2001:5B0:24FF:2EF0:0:0:0:3D (talk) 17:20, 15 June 2014 (UTC)


 * "If no one else weighs in with additional information, I shall go ahead and edit the paragraph myself . . . ."


 * After waiting 10 days for anyone else to comment, I went ahead and made the change. If in fact one of those victories over, say, Borg or McEnroe occurred when the opponent actually was #1 in the world, then I hope someone will please modify the paragraph accordingly to reflect that fact.
 * 2001:5B0:24FF:3CF0:0:0:0:32 (talk) 01:23, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

Rankings
The page presently reports that:


 * "Later that summer, Scanlon defeated world #4 Adriano Panatta at the US Open and, with two wins over former world #1 Ilie Nastase in early 1977, climbed the rankings to #23 by March of 1977."

Can anyone verify that this is true? The ATP's Web site does not confirm it, but it also reports no ranking at all for March of 1977. It reports a ranking of #52 as of December 12, 1976, and #40 as of July 2, 1977, but lists no ranking for any dates in between.

Here's the problem in detail: The ATP's Web site does not report players' historical rankings on a week-by-week basis. (At least not for any players back in the 1970s.) Instead it gives them at irregular intervals; usually it reports them roughly every 6 months, but sometimes it reports them at shorter intervals. And WHEN it reports them at shorter intervals, it does so whether the player's ranking has changed or not, and usually reports them as of the same odd-ball dates for every player. So whatever produces this irregular pattern, it is not a policy of simply reporting a given player's ranking only when it has changed.

Thus, for example, the first 4 rankings reported for Bill Scanlon after he turned pro and first had a ranking at all are as of December 12, 1976, July 2, 1977, August 23, 1977, and August 30, 1977. The rankings tables of other players active at that time (e.g., Ilie Nastase, Adriano Panatta) all contain entries for those same four dates, and for no other dates within the covered time period.

(The December and July dates fit the roughly-every-6-months pattern, but the two August dates — just a week apart from each other — are exceptional. The previous and following years contain no such anomalous extra listings for either Scanlon or Nastase, either in August or in any other month.  However, Panatta's page contains one extra listing for 1976 (August 24) that the other two players' pages lack.  Obviously the ATP is inconsistent in various ways in its selection of listing dates for the ranking listings on its Web site.)

The claim that Scanlon had a ranking of #23 in the world as of March 1977 was introduced by Bottlebrush2070 in the first of his (or her) three edits made on May 20 and 21, 2014 — the same person who told us that Adriano Panatta was ranked #3 in the world when Scanlon defeated him at the 1976 US Open. In the case of Panatta, we know that the ranking of #3 reported by Bottlebrush2070 must be false — that he could not have climbed to #3 a week or so after he reached #4 (August 24, 1976) — because the ATP Web site also tells us that Panatta's career high was #4; Panatta never had a world ranking of #3. However, in regard to Scanlon, it may be possible — if the ATP did in fact calculate new, revised rankings every week even back then, as I believe it does nowadays — that he did achieve a ranking of #23 in the world as of March 1977, and the ATP merely fails to report his ranking for that date on its Web site.

(Bottlebrush2070 contributed a substantial amount of additional information to the page, most of which I believe is accurate — or at least have no reason to doubt — and all of which I consider illuminating. So I am not attacking him or her, or suggesting that everything he or she added should be double-checked or viewed with suspicion.  But he/she did make at least one error, and maybe two.)

So, can anyone verify that Scanlon's ranking really did rise from #52 on December 12, 1976 to #23 sometime in March of 1977, before falling back down to #40 as of July 2, 1977 (and then climbing back to #37 as of both August 23 and August 30, 1977)?

Bottlebrush2070's claim sounds good, and makes a lot of sense in light of Scanlon's victories over Panatta (ranked #4 at the time) and Nastase (ranked #3 at the time, or at least somewhere between #3 and #7). Wins over top players boost a player's ranking way more than wins over lesser players, as one would expect. But I presently know of no way to verify the specific figure of 23, or to find any ranking for Scanlon (or any other player!) as of March 1977 other than his December 12, 1976 ranking of #52.

(Nor do I have any idea or suggestion what to do if we cannot verify Bottlebrush2070's figure of #23. While I cannot verify that it is true, I certainly have no reason to believe it false.  Nor do I know what to substitute for it.  "Climbed the rankings to #37 by August of 1977" does not sound nearly as impressive, and does not appear sufficiently reflective of Scanlon's flurry of wins over top-10 players between August of 1976 and early 1977, so shortly after he turned pro.)

Sources:

ATP World Tour – Tennis Players: Bill Scanlon

ATP World Tour – Tennis Players: Ilie Nastase

ATP World Tour – Tennis Players: Adriano Panatta

Only 3 players have a ranking entry for August 24, 1976: Panatta, Raymond Moore, and Henry Bunis.

ATP Singles Rankings since 1973

2001:5B0:24FF:3CF0:0:0:0:34 (talk) 11:18, 17 June 2014 (UTC)