It’s been a while since I posted new rankings. To help get us ready for Indian Wells, here are my latest hard court rankings. They are considerably more predictive the the ATP rankings, by considering two years’ worth of matches, surface, location, age, and weighting recent results more heavily. If this is your first time, click here to read more about the methodology.
As usual, there are plenty of surprises. Despite Federer’s defeat of Murray last weekend, Murray has overtaken Roger in my rankings–just barely. My numbers take into account quality of opponent, so my guess is that Murray’s win over Djokovic in the semifinals put him over the top.
Because younger players improve faster, my rankings consider each player’s age. As usual, you’ll find Tomic and Harrison ranked higher than in the ATP rankings. The shock, though, is Denis Kudla, #70 in my system. The ATP rankings have him barely inside the top 200.
On the flip side, these rankings demote several players who have racked up points at lesser events. Isner is at #20 (in part because my system doesn’t count Davis Cup) and Bogomolov is all the way down at #66.
Here is the current hard-court top 100:
RANK PLAYER PTS 1 Novak Djokovic 7437 2 Rafael Nadal 4560 3 Andy Murray 3778 4 Roger Federer 3757 5 Juan Martin del Potro 2919 6 Jo-Wilfried Tsonga 2663 7 Tomas Berdych 2476 8 Gael Monfils 2231 9 Kei Nishikori 1943 10 David Ferrer 1833 11 Mardy Fish 1806 12 Stanislas Wawrinka 1613 13 Robin Soderling 1599 14 Bernard Tomic 1543 15 Milos Raonic 1486 16 Marcos Baghdatis 1486 17 Janko Tipsarevic 1449 18 Marin Cilic 1424 19 Richard Gasquet 1406 20 John Isner 1314 RANK PLAYER PTS 21 Florian Mayer 1274 22 Gilles Simon 1265 23 Alexander Dolgopolov 1259 24 Marcel Granollers 1202 25 Andy Roddick 1195 26 David Nalbandian 1131 27 Fernando Verdasco 1108 28 Philipp Kohlschreiber 1083 29 Feliciano Lopez 1050 30 Jurgen Melzer 1019 31 Viktor Troicki 1004 32 Ernests Gulbis 1001 33 Nicolas Almagro 986 34 Samuel Querrey 982 35 Juan Monaco 968 36 Mikhail Youzhny 955 37 Julien Benneteau 953 38 Kevin Anderson 910 39 Nikolay Davydenko 875 40 Ivan Dodig 857 RANK PLAYER PTS 41 Michael Llodra 852 42 Ivan Ljubicic 817 43 Mikhail Kukushkin 798 44 Andreas Seppi 788 45 Ivo Karlovic 773 46 Jeremy Chardy 756 47 Lukas Lacko 741 48 Ryan Harrison 740 49 Donald Young 739 50 Denis Istomin 719 51 Philipp Petzschner 717 52 Guillermo Garcia-Lopez 704 53 Cedrik-Marcel Stebe 691 54 Grigor Dimitrov 681 55 Sergey Stakhovsky 669 56 Santiago Giraldo 661 57 Adrian Mannarino 654 58 Andrei Goloubev 648 59 Radek Stepanek 645 60 Igor Andreev 645 RANK PLAYER PTS 61 Steve Darcis 641 62 Jurgen Zopp 640 63 David Goffin 638 64 Robin Haase 632 65 Jarkko Nieminen 628 66 Alex Bogomolov 620 67 Lukasz Kubot 615 68 Thiemo de Bakker 605 69 Thomaz Bellucci 603 70 Denis Kudla 601 71 Olivier Rochus 588 72 Daniel Brands 581 73 Alejandro Falla 575 74 Dudi Sela 570 75 Xavier Malisse 565 76 Richard Berankis 564 77 Dmitry Tursunov 558 78 Igor Sijsling 558 79 Vasek Pospisil 557 80 Benoit Paire 548 RANK PLAYER PTS 81 Matt Ebden 544 82 Laurynas Grigelis 523 83 James Blake 517 84 Matthias Bachinger 511 85 Tobias Kamke 510 86 Marius Copil 510 87 Benjamin Becker 504 88 Ryan Sweeting 500 89 Jesse Levine 498 90 Roberto Bautista 483 91 Michael Zverev 480 92 Flavio Cipolla 480 93 Fabio Fognini 479 94 Jesse Huta Galung 478 95 Michael Berrer 475 96 Grega Zemlja 470 97 Yen-Hsun Lu 465 98 James Ward 460 99 Nicolas Mahut 452 100 Ruben Bemelmans 449
Thanks for these fascinating rankings! Lots of food for thought there. At first I was horrified to see that Nalbandian didn’t even seem to make the top 100. Then I found him at 26 – what a relief, and what a pleasant surprise!
I can’t help comparing the tennis ranking system with the way it’s done in chess – a game that is very different in some obvious ways, but has some remarkable similarities. (E.g. playing White is like serving, and you need to soften up the opponent with side-to-side play before pulling the trigger). Whereas the tennis system awards points for how far you get in each tournament, the chess system gives points for each individual game (the equivalent of a tennis match). If you play someone rated 2500, and win, for example, you get 2500+X points; if you lose, you get 2500-X; and if you draw (which of course is ruled out in tennis) you get exactly 2500. Then all the points are averaged, and the resulting rating is a much more accurate measurement of how well you performed against specific other players. In tennis, on the other hand, it’s possible to get a high ranking by winning several tournaments, even if – by good luck – you never had to beat a really strong opponent to do so.
Of course, most chess tournaments work on an all-play-all system that wouldn’t be feasible for tennis – it would require a lot more working courts, and the players would need more rest between events. But I feel the tennis ranking system is rather more influenced by the need to induce the top players to participate as often as possible.
Thanks for these rankings. Is it possible to publish similar rankings on a REGULAR basis? Perhaps once a month? I imagine the fluctuations in such figures will be fairly regular; a regular update of these numbers would make them very useful to many passionate tennis fans.