Just wondering where people think the world number one female singles player would be ranked if you put her on the men's ranking list.
Haven’t we had this topic quite a few times before? There’s a YouTube video somewhere of Tai Tzu Ying against a Taiwan guy in a match and yes, he’s faster and stronger and not highly ranked.
The match is quite fun and you can see some issues on both sides. For one the man is a lot faster then TTY and is able to consistently jump smash and hit hard. On the other hand TTY seems to be fitter, you can see him breathing hard quite often. Besides the 8 points advantage, TTY is around rank 1 whereas this guy is around rank 1000 at this moment. But you can't neglect the biologically difference in male/female hormones, males have around 15x more testosterone than females and testosterone is one major part in muscle grows. Therefor a male will have more muscles in relation to his bodyweight. A male will most likely has always an advantage over a female athlete of the same skill level and same bodyweight due this advantage in relative muscle mass. Don't think about bodybuilders, but about acceleration. E.g. a badminton player with more relative muscle mass in his legs will most likely be able to accelerate faster than a badminton player of equal bodyweight and skill (regardless of gender). In badminton this muscle mass will have impact on movement acceleration, jump height, racket swing speed (=shuttle speed) etc. It is like comparing a group of doped and not doped athletes, testosterone level in men is like natural, legal doping over years.