Novak Djokovic is the new World No.2 and is in the midst of an amazing 18-0 run which includes the Australian Open and the Indian Wells Masters. Federer has dropped to No.3 and he more or less needs a grand slam this year to get to No.2, given that Djokovic has piled on 3500 points already in these 3 months. It would have been difficult for Djokovic to cover up a 2500+ points gap against Federer had it not been for the 2 year old 'New Scoring' system of the ATP.
The ATP had overhauled the scoring system in 2009 and gave a good structure to tennis tournaments across the season. This was partly due to the criticism that Grand Slam champions should ideally be the top players of the year and not the other players. So ATP did tweak the scoring system a bit and try to ensure that Grand Slam winners do get good advantage in this new scoring system. Let me get into the details right away!
First, the classification. ATP has classified events into the following:
1) Grand Slams - The Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon and the US Open. These are the biggest and obviously the most followed around the world. Anything you do here goes right into the history books.
2) ATP Masters (1000 series) - These are just below the Grand Slams and happen around the year across surfaces. 8 of the 9 Masters tournaments are counted in your ranking points whether you play or not. So you will expect all the top players here. Excuse me, but the Williams are exceptions to this. Serena and Venus have been boycotting the Indian Wells Masters for close to a decade and have been consistently absent in may Masters over the years. The Williams sisters don't give a damn about the ranking atleast in the last couple of seasons. Ofcourse, Serena has had a shocking close escape to life recently. Devvarman on the other hand had a dream run in Indian Wells this year. Brushing aside Baghdatis and Malisse in the same tournament is no easy feat.
3) ATP 500 series - Lower to the ATP1000 tournaments, but usually the best players have a few on their annual schedule. The bigger the purse, the better the players and vice-versa!
4) ATP250 and others - Top players are a premium in this but you can expect Federer to be there at the Swiss Open and Djokovic at the Serbia Open. The irony is that over the last 2 years is that its Djokovic who is ruling in Switzerland! Federer - Don't let your home fans down at home this year!
5) ATP Finals - The top 8 (fit) players at the end of the year based on the ranking points play in this mouth-watering and only round robin tournament (only for the 1st round). Last 2 years and the coming few years, it will be played in the stunning O2 stadium in London, where Michael Jackson was supposed to perform before he sadly passed away. The night matches, music and the cream of tennis players are an absolute treat to the spectators. Given that it is the last tournament of this year, it makes it all the more special.
Points system:
Now that we know the basic tournaments, let see how many points does a winner rack up.
|
|
Grand Slams |
ATP Masters |
ATP 500 |
ATP250/Others |
|
Winner |
2000 |
1000 |
500 |
250 |
|
Runner-up |
1200 |
600 |
300 |
150 |
|
Semifinalists |
720 |
360 |
180 |
90 |
|
QFs |
360 |
180 |
90 |
45 |
In the ATP World tour finals, first there are 2 pools of 4 players each. So in the first round, each player gets to play 3 matches. Then the top 2 from each pool move into the semis. For every match a player wins in the round-robin phase, he gets 200 points/match and a semis win will give another 400 points. A player who has won the finals winning all the matches will get 1500 points. (3*200 = 600 points for 3 games in the round robin, 400 points for semis and a further 500 points for winning the final).
Before this system, the Winner and runners-up had a smaller gap in ranking points. Now ATP has increased the gap between the winners and the others. So getting to the finals is just not good enough! Also, classifying the tournaments in this fashion has got some system into the previously "unclassified" tournaments.
Number of tournaments:
The "Best 18" tournaments of the player will be considered for the purpose of ranking.
All the 4 Grand Slams and the 8 of the 9 ATP Masters will be counted in the players points, whether they play or not. So this makes the total so far as 12.
Apart from these 12, players need to participate in any 4 of the 11 ATP 500 tournaments and any 2 of the others.
So, to sum up, 4 GS + 8 ATP Masters + 4 ATP 500's + 2 ATP 250/others = 18 tournaments.
The 19th tournament will be the World tour finals, for the top 8 players. This will be added to find out who the number 1 player is.
You typically have the top players playing about 20-25 tournaments a year and the sub-100 players playing a few more tournaments that, both for money and valuable points.
Weekly rankings:
The rankings are updated weekly on Monday. So after the present current week, the Indian Wells tournament points for 2011 will replace the players 2010 points. After the particular tournament is played in the current year, the previous year's points get replaced.
2011:
Rafael Nadal is way ahead of the rest of the pack. Rafa has 12,630 ATP points compared to 8280 for Roger and 8710 for Djokovic. Djokovic needed 210 points more than Federer in Indian Wells and he did that when he beat Federer in the semis. Rafa, though well ahead has close to 7000 points to defend. Through May and June, Rafa can only save his points from dropping by winning all the tournaments in the run-up to the French Open, French Open and the Wimbledon. He has won them all last year and if he loses any of them, he will drop points. Federer and Djokovic meanwhile dint have a great showing last year and hence have not many points to lose till the end of Wimbledon.
Hope you got a decent idea on how these rankings work. Next time, you can get to the calculations before it comes in the news! Am looking forward to an exciting season of tennis ahead in 2011. A 3-way race in which Nadal looks to be ahead and Djokovic looking the stronger contender for the top spot. Things change quickly. It was supposed to be Nadal vs Federer in Australia, but Djokovic won. Let's see if Nadal can hold on to the top spot this year. Djokovic is playing brilliantly and has been winning plenty of mind games with Federer off late. Nadal too looked quite shaken after the Indian Wells loss. Djokovic, the once termed "One slam wonder" is slowly becoming a superstar.
Subscribe to this comment's feed
Show/hide comments
a guest
said:
 |
... Generally a good article and good to bring this to attention of those that might not follow game quite as closely. But you have a few errors - -the Swiss Indoor (Basel) is a 500 point event not 250 (the actual Swiss Open at Gsaad is 250 but Federer hasn 't played there since 2003) The tournament that Federer always plays and Djokovic has played recently in the Fall is Basel. But Djokovic hasn't been 'ruling in Switzerland over the last 2 years" - he did win in 2009 against Fed in the final but Federer won it back in 2010 from him in a good final. If you want to further explore the rankings, try to understand and explain why Federer gained no points in Dubai this year -- the 300 are listed as 'not counting' even though it is a 500 and he doesn't have 4 of them.??? I've been trying to get an explanation to this for over a month and nobody answers! |
a guest
said:
|
... Hi ppl. Did not notice the Swiss open rightly. It is in Basel that Federer and Djokovic play. I dint check up the info. It is a ATP 500 event and Djokovic had won in 2009, Fed in 2010. Regarding why dubai hasnt been counted in Federer's points...this is because Federer has not played 4 ATP 500's in the last 12 months and hence has been penalised for that..the 300 points from Dubai would get added after he plays 3 more ATP 500's (Thats what I think!) |
a guest
said:
|
... The ATP Finals are actually worth more than the Master 1000's tournaments, with the Champion receiving as much as 1500 points. Also, Federer beat Djokovic in Basel last year. Djokovic was only able to win it in 2009, not to mention that the Swiss Open is an ATP 500 tourney not an ATP 250. |
Ashwin Durga
said:
 |
... Hey..Yeah, the Swiss thing was a mistake on my part. The Swiss Open is not the one Fed and Djokovic play. Its the Swiss Indoors..which is a ATP 500 tourney. Also, I have mentioned about the ATP finals points just below the table of points... |
a guest
said:
|
... quite informative... i do follow tennis, never knew the rating system... great read ! |
a guest
said:
|
... why hasn't rafael Nadal gained 500 points from Barcelona 500 as he did not play the same tournment last year?.. Thanks in advance |
Ashwin Durga
said:
|
... Since Rafa played only two 500s in 2010, he received two “Zero-pointer” penalties - which were assigned to the last two 500s of the year where he chose not to play (Valencia & Washington). These Zero-point penalties stay on a player’s ranking for 52 weeks. Rafa's Barcelona points will therefore not count towards his ranking until the next Zero-Point penalty falls off. This will be inAugust, when his Zero-Pointer penalty for Washington is removed and his 500 points from Barcelona will take its place. I should have talked about the penalty system in place. Nice point you raised.. |
a guest
said:
|
... Great article. Where can we see a ranking with the comparison with previous results, that means how many points is every player defending in the following tournaments? Thanks in advance |
Show/hide comment form
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
