The new year brings a surprise with the first update of the ranking ATP in 2021. There being no competition and without an official statement from the ATP, few expected that there could be changes in the classification between December 28, 2020 and January 4, 2021, but the surprise jumped when consulting the list few minutes after it was made public. And there are players who have added points, even among the best in the world, and others who have managed to improve some position reaching the best record of their career, thanks to the reformulation carried out by the entity directed by Andrea Gaudenzi. But What does the proposed change consist of?
So far, to establish a tennis player’s score in the ranking ATP the 18 best results were taken into account. From now on, the 19 best records, derived from the 4 Grand Slams, 8 mandatory Masters 1000 (all except for Monte Carlo) and 7 extra results harvested in ATP 500, ATP 250 and also the ATP Cup tournaments, which far from appearing as a separate event, is now considered one more from which to choose if more than 19 tournaments are played in a year. In addition, all those who manage to qualify for the Nitto ATP Finals they could even compute the result of up to 20 tournaments, since this event is set aside and the points achieved are added to those of the 19 best results achieved.
Last year, due to the coronavirus, what was changed was the deadline for selections of the 18 most notable results of a tennis player, from the usual 12 months to 22. This is what has allowed players not to be forced to defend the points of last year, but to choose between their best performance in them between 2019 and 2020. With the foreseeable normalization of the calendar, the ATP carries out a remodeling that it had been outlining for some time, but had not yet become effective. Now it has come to stay and its implementation in 2021 will be final if it works properly.
The most obvious consequence is that it offers more options to score points to those players who play many tournaments beyond the 12 big ones established as the standard in the scoring of all players. This is clear from the players who have been affected from one week to the next due to the implementation of this rule, having in common all of them that they have played more tournaments than the maximum 18 that scored before, so they can improve their qualifying record . The most important changes in the top-10 are the following:
- Stefanos Tsitsipas: Go from 5925 to 5940 points
- Alexander Zverev: Goes from 5525 to 5615 points
- Andrey Rublev: Goes from 4119 to 4164 points
- Matteo Berrettini: Go from 3075 to 3085 points
While it is true that these changes are slight and do not cause alternation in their positions, they do so over other players, who thanks to this new regulation appear in this first list of 2021 with the best ATP ranking of their respective professional careers, having improved some position. They are as follows:
- Jannik Sinner: From position 37 with 1444 points, to position 36 with 1464 points
- Tommy Paul: From position 54 with 1065 points, to position 52 with 1080 points
- Marcos Giron: From position 73 with 869 points, to position 70 with 880 points
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