The Rankings Thread (ATP)

[TennisFanatic7]

Wawrinka has scored 4815 points this year to date, Murray is now up to 4305. It's only a slim chance but if Stan keeps underperforming and Andy gets some wins in Paris and London, the "Big Four" could finish the year in the top four spots even after all of their mixed fortunes and upsets throughout the year.

Nishikori is on 4275 as well so if he's fully fit for the last two tournaments he could get himself up there by the end of the year.

 

[tented]

New rankings for Monday, October 27:

http://www.tennisfrontier.com/mens-world-tennis-rankings/

 

[herios]

New career highs in the top 100 as of 27 Oct.:

22. David Goffin 23y
44. Jack Sock 22y
46. Jan-Lennard Struff 24y
50. Pablo Carreno Busta 23y
57. Dusan Lajovic 24y
76. Diego Schwatzman 22y
82. Sam Groth 27y
93. Borna Coric 17y
95. Filip Krajinovic 22y


Quite a week, 9 players running at their best, except Groth from Australia, all the others are 24y or younger.
Coric makes the top 100 at 17y, no doubt he will be a top 10 player at the minimum.

 

[isabelle]

Goffin has a decent ranking now, hope he can improve till top 10

 

[Front242]

^ Me too but can't see it. The difference in points separating number 22 from 10 is pretty big. Goffin at number 22 has 1566 points versus 3930 for Raonic at number 10. That's quite a gap.

 

[TennisFanatic7]

I don't see Goffin as a potential top tenner but good for him rising this high.

 

[tented]

New career highs in the top 100 as of 27 Oct.:

22. David Goffin 23y
44. Jack Sock 22y
46. Jan-Lennard Struff 24y
50. Pablo Carreno Busta 23y
57. Dusan Lajovic 24y
76. Diego Schwartzman 22y
82. Sam Groth 27y
93. Borna Coric 17y
95. Filip Krajinovic 22y


Quite a week, 9 players running at their best, except Groth from Australia, all the others are 24y or younger.
Coric makes the top 100 at 17y, no doubt he will be a top 10 player at the minimum.

This week's list puts a smile on my face. It's great to see so many young guys reaching career highs. I'm especially happy about Goffin, Sock, and Coric.

 

[El Dude]

Some fun stuff:

Top 100 Age 21 and Under (teenagers in bold):
37 Dominic Thiem
53 Nick Kyrgios
70 Jiri Vesely
93 Borna Coric

That's it - only four top 100 players are age 21 and under. If we up the limit to age 22, we only add a few: Jack Sock (44), Bernardo Tomic (56), Diego Sebastian Schwartzman (76), Filip Krajinovic (95). If we add age 23 we get so-called "young guns" Milos Raonic (10) and Grigor Dimitrov (11), as well as David Goffin (22), Jerzy Janowicz (42), Pablo Carreno Busta (50), and Andrey Kuznetsov (81).

Top 100 Age 30+: (age 33+ in bold)
2 Roger Federer
6 David Ferrer
14 Feliciano Lopez
17 Tommy Robredo
27 Ivo Karlovic
28 Julien Benneteau
33 Fernando Verdasco
35 Benjamin Becker
36 Guillermo Garcia Lopez
39 Yen Hsun Lu
47 Mikhail Youzhny
48 Gilles Muller
49 Lleyton Hewitt
51 Andreas Seppi
58 Radek Stepanek
65 Victor Estrella
68 Juan Monaco
69 Jarkko Nieminen
71 Malek Jaziri
74 Paulo Lorenzi
77 Carlos Berlocq
83 Alejandro Falla
84 Tommy Haas
90 Edouard Roger-Vasselin
96 Paul Henri Mathieu
100 Maximo Gonzalez

That's 26 players, or 26% of the top 100 is age 30 or older!

Percentage of players in the top 100 that are...

Teenagers: 1%
21 and under: 4%
23 and under: 14%
24 to 29: 60%
30 and older: 26%
33 and older: 9%
35 and older: 2%

(p.s. to Trented - I'll do an updated age analysis for the blog after the we get the year-end rankings...I promise!)

 

[El Dude]

A bit more.

Players Born in second half of 90s in Top 200 (1995 and later):
53. Nick Kyrgios, 19 (April 27, 1995)
93. Borna Coric, 17 (Nov 14, 1996)
137. Alexander Zverev, 17 (April 20, 1997)
158. Thanasi Kokkinakis, 18 (April 10, 1996)
167. Yoshihito Nishioka, 19 (Sept 27, 1995)
183. Hyeon Chung, 18 (May 19, 1996)

Players Born in the 1970s in Top 200:
27. Ivo Karlovic, 35 (Feb 28, 1979)
58. Radek Stepanek, 35 (Nov 27, 1978)
84. Tommy Haas, 36 (April 3, 1978)
129. Michael Russell, 36 (May 1, 1978)

The oldest player in the top 500 is #337 Marc Gicquel, who is 37 (born March 30, 1977). Gicquel retired this year, I believe. He never won an ATP title but was the runner up at three ATP 250s. His highest ranking was #37 in November of 2008 and his best Grand Slam result was 4R at the US Open in 2006 - he was defeated by eventual champion Roger Federer, but not before defeating former Grand Slam champions Juan Carlos Ferrero and Gaston Gaudio.

The youngest is #491 Andrey Rublev, who just turned 17 (born Oct 20, 1997). His name would be familiar to fans of Andrei Tarkovsky's films. Rublev won the 2014 Junior Slam at the French Open this year. He's won three Futures so far and is definitely a player to watch.

 

[herios]

The oldest player in the top 500 is #337 Marc Gicquel, who is 37 (born March 30, 1977). Gicquel retired this year, I believe. He never won an ATP title but was the runner up at three ATP 250s. His highest ranking was #37 in November of 2008 and his best Grand Slam result was 4R at the US Open in 2006 - he was defeated by eventual champion Roger Federer, but not before defeating former Grand Slam champions Juan Carlos Ferrero and Gaston Gaudio.

Marc Gicquel is not retired. He just played a challenger 3 weeks ago, defeating G. Melzer and Paul Henri Mathieu (who is a top 100 player) then lost to Mahut.
He is a player who had a late blooming cycle, entering into the top 100 at 29.

 

[El Dude]

Marc Gicquel is not retired. He just played a challenger 3 weeks ago, defeating G. Melzer and Paul Henri Mathieu (who is a top 100 player) then lost to Mahut. He is a player who had a late blooming cycle, entering into the top 100 at 29.

Then Wikipedia is wrong (shock!). The entry says "Marc Gicquel is a former professional tennis player."

 

[herios]

Marc Gicquel is not retired. He just played a challenger 3 weeks ago, defeating G. Melzer and Paul Henri Mathieu (who is a top 100 player) then lost to Mahut. He is a player who had a late blooming cycle, entering into the top 100 at 29.

Then Wikipedia is wrong (shock!). The entry says "Marc Gicquel is a former professional tennis player."

Unless he just retired after this challenger. But ATP still shows him as an active player, so we shall see if he still will play or not next year.

 

[GameSetAndMath]

It used to be the case that if you can muster 3000 points, you are likely to be in top 10.
This year all players in top 10 have at least 4000 points each.

This is an artifact of the stranglehold of big four loosening up. They used to gobble up
almost all the points before leaving very few up out there making the cut off for top 10
so low. Now that more and more big points are being garnered by other folks ( 2 GS and 2MS
this year), the cut off for top 10 has increased to 4000.

I think it will remain that way for the next few years.

 

[Fiero425]

It used to be the case that if you can muster 3000 points, you are likely to be in top 10.
This year all players in top 10 have at least 4000 points each.

This is an artifact of the stranglehold of big four loosening up. They used to gobble up
almost all the points before leaving very few up out there making the cut off for top 10
so low. Now that more and more big points are being garnered by other folks ( 2 GS and 2MS
this year), the cut off for top 10 has increased to 4000.

I think it will remain that way for the next few years.

Yep! After Wawrinka beat Nadal in OZ, I had to come off the 'gutless' moniker for the 2nd tier! Grigor, Kei, and others have come through; not nearly as much as I think they should, but at least it isn't looking like Fed and Nadal were their Gods! Nole's playing well, but it's no cakewalk! He had to fight to get his latest major and he hasn't done much since but "hold on!" :dodgy: :angel:

 

[GameSetAndMath]

With Bercy over, here is the situation. Novak and Fed will occupy #1 and #2 in some order
(with Novak having very high chances of being #1). Even though, Rafa is out of action, he is
safe to retain his #3 rankings going into 2015. But, with respect to #4 position in the rankings
chart, the story is totally different. Any one of the six players (Stan, Kei, Andy, Bird, Milos and Cilic) could end up being #4 with just 745 points separating them with the WTF to go.

Needless to say that the #4 spot is a valuable spot and there will be a tough fight among
these six players to get that. So, each one and every one of them will play hard not only in
matches against other contenders for #4, but also in their matches against Fed and Novak.
Hence, I think all matches will be quite competitive (not necessarily score wise, but effort
and desire wise) and that would make this WTF interesting.

Also, with a week gap between Bercy and WTF after a few years of no gap, hopefully
players will have time to nurse their injuries and bring themselves up to for to give us
an exciting WTF.

 

[Front242]

Stan's ranking is likely to drop like a rock come January anyway regardless of how he does at the WTF. Hope Cilic's arm injury is ok so we don't have one injured sitting duck there.

 

[GameSetAndMath]

Stan's ranking is likely to drop like a rock come January anyway regardless of how he does at the WTF. Hope Cilic's arm injury is ok so we don't have one injured sitting duck there.

Stan's ranking will drop after AO. This fight is about getting the no. 4 for the AO>

 

[Fiero425]

With Bercy over, here is the situation. Novak and Fed will occupy #1 and #2 in some order
(with Novak having very high chances of being #1). Even though, Rafa is out of action, he is
safe to retain his #3 rankings going into 2015. But, with respect to #4 position in the rankings
chart, the story is totally different. Any one of the six players (Stan, Kei, Andy, Bird, Milos and Cilic) could end up being #4 with just 715 points separating them with the WTF to go.

Needless to say that the #4 spot is a valuable spot and there will be a tough fight among
these six players to get that. So, each one and every one of them will play hard not only in
matches against other contenders for #4, but also in their matches against Fed and Novak.
Hence, I think all matches will be quite competitive (not necessarily score wise, but effort
and desire wise) and that would make this WTF interesting.

Also, with a week gap between Bercy and WTF after a few years of no gap, hopefully
players will have time to nurse their injuries and bring themselves up to for to give us
an exciting WTF.

This is such a rare event; been years even with Rafa taking off ever so often for months at a time over the last several years! I have to tip my cap to the 2nd tier who have really performed this past season, but with advancing age and injury hitting all concerned, not sure how long it'll last! :clap :angel: :dodgy:

 

[tented]

New rankings for Monday, November 3, 2014:

http://www.tennisfrontier.com/mens-world-tennis-rankings

 

[herios]

Career high on Nov. 3:

5. Kei Nishikori 24y
37. Steve Johnson 24y
42. Jack Sock 22y
81. Sam Groth 27y
92. Borna Coric 17y


Kei came a long way. The question, obviously is, how much higher he will manage?
#4 is definitely within reaching distance, if he will be able to do that, he will surpass Tsongs and Berdych best rankings ever.