Women's tennis is a joke (there, I said it)

Has anyone else been shaking their heads in bewilderment at the carousel of World No. 1s we've seen recently on the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour? Are there really that many dominant women clamoring for the top spot, or does this phenomenon speak to the long overdue need to reform the tour's rankings formula? I'm afraid it's painfully obvious that the latter is the more plausible scenario.

Don't get me wrong; the women at the top of the game are real and dedicated talents who toil week in and week out, garnering fairly consistent results. What irks me is the fact that the world rankings at any given time rarely reflect accurately the true stand-outs on the tour. In particular, the current game of musical chairs at the very top of the list exposes the outdated and unfair assignment of rankings points presently administered by the women's tour. The formula as it exists does not place enough value on the four Grand Slam tournaments--which are the pinnacle of the sport--and fails to distinguish actual champions from those who merely grind it out every week of the season and manage to reach the semifinals of virtually every tournament.

We see this absurdity manifest itself in the seemingly routine crowning of players who have not even one Grand Slam title to their names as the No. 1 player in the world. Case in point: Next week, Dinara Safina (a slamless player) will snatch the No. 1 ranking from Serena Williams. Nevermind the fact that Serena currently holds the U.S. and Australian Open titles in addition to having been runner-up at last year's Wimbledon. Her sister Venus, despite having beaten Serena in that final--and thus holding arguably the most prestigious title in all of tennis--in addition to posting solid results at other tournaments throughout the year, remains a relatively lowly number 5. This has happened on several other occasions in the recent past, with both Kim Clijsters and Amélie Mauresmo achieving the number 1 ranking before breaking through and winning their first major titles. And Jelena Jankovic spent an astonishing 17 weeks at the top spot starting last year and running through this year's Australian Open--in her entire career, she has managed to reach just one Grand Slam final. Her secret? She plays a lot of tennis.

It's time for this madness to stop. The WTA must follow the example of the ATP World Tour (the men's counterpart) and seriously assess and reform its current rankings formula to reflect the fact that the four Grand Slam tournaments form the pillars of this great sport by widening the gap between the amount of points awarded at Slams and the amount awarded at less prestigious events. How crazy would it be if Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer were not at the very top of the men's game in spite of their utter dominance at the majors? For whatever reason, the women's tour values quantity over quality with regard to its top players, and women's tennis is worse off for it.