ATP Rankings Screw Up

The ATP world rankings are based on a rolling 12 month aggregate of points, from a players best 18 tournaments. (19 for the 8 ATP Finals participants, who are able to include the season ender as an additional)

Points gained in a tournament will be dropped after 52 weeks and replaced by any gained in the equivalent week one year on.

Example: Novak Djokovic received 600 points for his finishing runner-up in the 2018 Paris Masters 1000.

He won the 2019 Paris Masters 1000, and accordingly lost the 600 but received 1000 for this years victory.  A net gain of 400 points.

This logic would see his ranking points increase to 9945 and him still be #1, ahead of Rafa Nadal on 9585.

However, for some ridiculous reason, the ATP has decided that points gained in the ATP Finals will be dropped, not after 52 weeks, but after the final tournament prior to the next years ATP Finals, effectively 50 weeks.

So the 1000 points received by Djokovic in the 2018 ATP Finals were dropped after the 2019 Paris Masters 1000, leaving Nadal ahead in the rankings, 9585 to 8945.

The variation in treatment of ATP Finals points has given a false assessment of who is the world number one ranked player. To be consistent, the 1000 points for Djokovic should have been retained until the conclusion of the 2019 ATP Finals, at which stage they would be dropped and replaced with any points gained in this years tournament.

Another bewildering ATP decision which I don’t believe worries Djokovic too much - he’s more interested in gathering titles than this garbage, but records in tennis matter, and total weeks at #1 is a big statistic.

This is the third time application of the curious differentiation in points drop which has seen Djokovic lose the #1 position. 2013 and 2016 were precursors to this year.

In total, if the points drop had been properly applied, in my opinion, Djokovic would have had 281 weeks at #1;  instead he sits on 275, third behind Roger Federer on 310 and Pete Sampras on 286.

At least this screw up does not have an immediate on-court effect.