End of Year #1 - Questions

[Kostas]

I've heard that Roger has something like 1800 points to 'defend' for the remainder of the year and Rafa has like 400 and is currently only like 600 points behind Roger.

Can anyone break down exactly what needs to happen for Roger or Rafa to have the #1 spot at the end of this year?

I understand that Roger is still considered to have 1 Grand Slam in the US Open, meaning he pretty much has to win that again to keep those points. But what else has to happen in the big/medium sized tournaments for Roger to stay #1 or Rafa to take #1?

 

[flyer]

Roger has slightly over 3000 actually and Rafa slightly over 1000, idk where you heard your numbers, the proportions were similar though

 

[Kostas]

You're correct. It looks like Roger is defending 3,175 points and Rafa 1,425. It also looks like there could be nothing Roger can do to stave off Rafa as Roger is defending points from 7 events from last year but he won 4 of them, made the finals in 2 and the R16 in one.

Rafa had a much less stellar 2nd half last year where he is defending 8 events, but only won 1 of them. He had two finals, two semi-finals, and 3 worse results this year.

Even if Roger repeated last year's results (which are probably unlikely) all Rafa needs to do is make it to the finals at the US Open (and lose) and do one round better in one of three ATP Master series events (one of which he was ousted in the R32).

It looks like it's going to be a herculean effort by Roger if he is going to maintain the #1 ranking this year.

 

[jrachiever]

A lot of questions seem to constantly pop up about the rankings. Here are some general guidelines:

You can go to http://atptennis.com and look up any player. Click in their playing activity to view their results for any year in their career. You'll see each match in every tournament and how many points they were awarded for each result. As a result, you can calculate for yourself how many points they are defending in each upcoming tournament.

In general, for Grand Slams, pts are awarded as following:

1st rd - 5pts (20 if you made it through qualifying)
2nd rd - 35pts
3rd rd - 75pts
4th rd - 150pts
QF - 250pts
SF - 450pts
F - 700pts
W - 1000pts

For masters series, approximately half the pts are awarded, with a few slight exceptions in the early rds.

For smaller tournaments, pts can vary, with some of the bigger events such as Dubai and Barcelona awarding 300pts to the winner, with smaller events like Newport awarding 175pts, and others anywhere in between. The Olympics will award 400pts to the winner this year.

A player's rankings is dependent upon how many pts they've acquired over the last 52 weeks, counting the 4 slams, 9 masters series, and best 5 other tournaments. For lower ranked players who didn't automatically qualify for masters series or slams, they can use more smaller events, challengers, futures, etc...to make up their best 18 results.

For those who qualified for the year end championships, they get a free 19th tournament for extra pts, with 100pts being awarded for each round robin win, 200 pts for a SF win, and 250pts for a final win. Thus you can win either 650 or 750 for winning the entire tournament. The masters cup points are the only points that don't hold for 52 weeks though, as they go off the books after only 51 (or 50) weeks so that going in to the masters cup, the points race matches up with the rankings. Federer currently has 650 pts from last year's masters cup to Nadal's 200, so it seems very probable that even if Federer defends a lot of his points from last for the remainder of the season, after MS Paris, Nadal will get to be #1 going into the masters cup.

 

[westy]

is the year end number one done on the rankings or the race?

 

[jrachiever]

is the year end number one done on the rankings or the race?

They are the same at the end of the year.

 

[remcob]

race/rankings

Nadal pulled out on Monday from the clay-tournament from Stuttgart which he won last year and which gave him 250 points in the rankings.
Last year after Stuttgart Federer was 135 points down in the race (1 point in the race is equal to 5 in the rankings), currently he is 270 down (955 against 685)

Looks a awfull lot but if they perform equal like last year Federer will have surpassed Nadal in the race after the US Open

For the last two year, Nadal performs much less the second half of the year which according to me has a lot to with the amount of matches and the intensity with which he plays in the first half.

So although I sure wouldn't bet against Nadal taking over nr1 after the US Open, it surely ain't a sure bet.