Jannik Sinner is no longer world No. 1: from Monday 2 November he handed over the scepter to the 30-year-old German Sascha Zverev. The blue player, who has been out of action since the Wimbledon final due to knee inflammation, is currently the tenth tennis player who has remained at the top for the longest time (95 weeks) and in his third reign he broke away from Carlos Alcaraz (66) and overtook Stefan Edberg (72) and Lleyton Hewitt (80) and moved to just six weeks behind Agassi, 9th in the all-time rankings at 101. Zverev, however, became the 30th number one of the world in the history of the ATP (Association of Tennis Professionals) ranking, i.e. since 1973 with the advent of computerized and mobile 52-week calculation. But what is the tennis ranking for and how was it calculated in the past? Let’s find out together.
ATP Ranking in tennis, what it is for and how it is calculated
The position in the table, or ranking, in tennis is used to draw up the list of participants and assign the seedings (favourites in the draws) for the main and qualifying draws of all professional tournaments. Points are awarded according to the result obtained in each individual tournament and based on its importance, with the four Slams (Australian Open, Roland Garros, Wimbledon and US Open) guaranteeing the highest number of points, i.e. 2,000 to the winner, followed by the ATP Finals which can guarantee up to 1,500 to the undefeated champion. The points accumulated in the same week of the previous year are automatically removed and the player is called to “defend them” by equaling or improving the performance, “under penalty” of being deducted equal to the difference between the two results. The ranking is officially updated every Monday. In the ATP circuit, the best results obtained in 18 seasonal tournaments are counted (plus any bonus from the ATP Finals if the player qualifies). The Davis Cup for men’s national teams nor the Olympic Games do not award points for ranking purposes.
Before computers it was written by journalists
Before 1973 there was no objective, computerized ranking method. The players were registered on the scoreboards arbitrarily at the suggestion of the national federations or upon invitation. The only rankings circulating until 1968, and even for the following five years, were lists compiled by eminent tennis personalities, often journalists. Among these, given the weight of British tennis in the first half of the twentieth century, several Daily Telegraph reporters, including Lance Tingay, whose “personal” ranking of the players was taken as a reference for the top ten (from 1952 to 1972) and the assignment of the title of best player of the season. In those transitional years, Sid (Sports Information Dienst, a German news agency founded in 1945) was also entrusted with examining the personal rankings of around twenty journalists specializing in tennis, to provide a European ranking. The categories into which the ATP tournaments were divided were six compared to the current three (1000-500-250) and the criteria for awarding points to the tournaments were linked to the number of participating players and the prize money up for grabs.
The computerized ranking: from the average to the sum of the points
The first ranking of the newly formed ATP, dated 23 August 1973, was drawn up by a huge computer made available by TRW, a large aerospace company of the time, and included a list of 185 players with No. 1 the Romanian Ilie Nastase followed by Manuel Orantes, Stan Smith, Arthur Ashe, Rod Laver, Ken Rosewall, John Newcombe, the Italian Adriano Panatta, Tom Okker and Jimmy Connors. In 1973 the rankings were published eleven times, as in 1974. Then the frequency gradually increased over the years: thirteen in 1975, twenty-three in 1976, thirty-four in 1977, forty in 1978, forty-three in 1979, finally reaching the current weekly frequency. Before the advent of the International Tennis Weekly, players would telephone an ATP office or receive a piece of paper in the post informing them of the rankings. On March 1, 1976, the doubles ranking was also drawn up for the first time.
From 1973 to 1989 the ranking system was based on the average of points obtained over the previous 52 weeks. The total was therefore divided by the tournaments played, a minimum of 12, and included minor corrections modified several times over time. The ATP recognized that the “average system” had flaws and, in general, did not encourage playing on surfaces other than the preferred one. Since 1990 it has abandoned the average and moved to the sum of the 14 best results, and currently, as mentioned, it considers the results of 18 tournaments (the four Slams, the 9 Masters 1000 and the five best performances between the ATP 250 and 500) plus the ATP Finals.
