What the System Actually Rewards
A rolling window with countable slots and compulsory events rewards a particular profile: consistency over peaks, and availability over everything. A player who reaches respectable rounds constantly and plays a full compulsory calendar will out-rank a player capable of occasional brilliance who misses weeks. That is a deliberate design choice, since the ranking's job is to seed draws and fill entry lists fairly rather than to identify the best player in some absolute sense. It also explains why the ranking and the general perception of who is best diverge most sharply after an injury. The list is not asking who is most talented. It is asking what a player has actually done in the last twelve months, and it counts absence as an answer.
