Patriotism in the World of Sports
On Sunday December 4th, 2005 the Davis Cup, tennis' world cup, was won by Croatia. The runner-up nation was Slovakia. Is tennis so obscure a sport that the bigger nations could not be bothered with it? Well, no. Not exactly. The US and Russia for example, have multiple top-10 players according to world rankings, yet they lose team competitions to smaller nations all the time. They also have to beg their star players to participate, and even when they get their best players to represent the nation, they underachieve. The exact opposite is true for smaller nations. Players see it as an honour rather than a hassle, and elevate their level of play significantly. Just look at Ivan Ljubicic (CRO), a perennial 2nd r
ounder in Grandslam tournaments, yet a Davis Cup record-breaker. When the prize consists of a million $, he gets whipped by guys like Roddick and Agassi, but put national pride on the line, and he beats them both in one weekend. These results suggest an inverse relationship between the level of patriotism and the size of a nation, as seen in the graph above. The only notable outlier on the chart is Italy, which has somehow maintained its high-level of patriotism, despite its relatively large size. It must be something in the pasta sauce.Above right: Ivo Karlovic, Mario Ancic and Ivan Ljubicic of Croatia...Davis Cup Champs!
World Tennis Rankings (Nations): http://www.daviscup.com/ranking/current.asp
World Tennis Rankings (Individuals): http://www.atptennis.com/en/players/entrysystem/
posted by Desiderius1979 @ 1:46 PM
3 Comments:
Great chart there, did you scracth that together in 8 nanoseconds? Not to mention that information is pretty bogus.
Let's not confuse the issues bud. The information presented is factual. It is my interpretation of that information (my conclusion) that you find bogus. The chart took 6 nanoseconds.
I agree that the US has a relatively low amount of patriotism(just look at how they re-elected President 'Let's Sacrifice Joe Average for Useless Causes While Us More Well To Do Citizens Dodge The Draft Or Don't Serve Entirely' Bush). And I also extend my congratulations on the Davis Cup victory.
It's just that chart is useless! There's no scientific measure of 'Level of Patriotism' and even if there were, countries still wouldn't follow your magic arbitrary little red line there.
I do understand what you're trying to communicate, but it's just more confusing/misleading than anything else.
BTW, Ivanisevic played Karlovic in a practise match and Goran won? Wow
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