Hard Court Rankings: 6 March 2012

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

2 thoughts on “Hard Court Rankings: 6 March 2012”

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

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