Tennis

Changes in the ATP Ranking: unchanged top ten and Machac’s rise

After the first Grand Slam of the 2022 tennis year, the men’s rankings changed again, but this time in lower positions. Another Czech and Andy Murray approached the world top 100, while the Grand Slam champions experienced big drops. So who did well and who will have to catch up during the year?

Published

2 years ago

31. 1. 2022

Petr Hais

tenis, australian open — Zdroj: Steve Collis, CC BY 2.0

Moving forward

To find a shift up the rankings by more than ten places, we need to look all the way back to the world’s second top 50. The Australian Open helped not only the experienced Frenchman Adrian Mannarino up, but also the 24-year-old American Maxime Cressy. Both tennis players reached the eighth round, with Cressy notching a win over Tomas Machac along the way.

Also heading high was perhaps one of the luckiest tennis players at this year’s Australian Open. Miomir Kecmanovic was originally scheduled to play his compatriot Novak Djokovic in the first round, but due to circumstances already known, he was matched against Italian Caruso. And it is thanks to this coincidence that the Serbian made it to the fourth round, and moving up fourteen places means the 22-year-old is currently ranked 63rd.

Big jumps can be found in the second hundred of the rankings, with the performance of 23-year-old Russian Pavel Kotov being worth mentioning. Thanks to his win at the Challenger in Forlì, he has jumped up fifty places and is among the top 200 players for the first time in his career. Andy Murray of Scotland, who is currently 102nd in the world after moving up eleven spots, moved closer to the top 100.

Falls down

The biggest drop in the top 100 was suffered by Austrian star Dominic Thiem. He missed the opening Grand Slam of the season due to a nursed injury and will not start until this week on clay in Córdoba, Argentina. The winner of the 2020 US Open will start the tournament from the 37th position (he was 16th before the Australian Open – ed.).

Roger Federer, the 20-time champion of the “Big Four” tournaments, has also dropped thirteen places, as he has not yet resolved his health problems. Arthur Rinderknech (12 places down to 60th), Jaume Munar (17 places down to 88th), Guido Pella (15 places down to 91st) and Thiago Monteiro (13 places down to 92nd) also dropped in the top 100.

Drastic falls befell three well-known tennis names. In the second 100 are Milos Raonic, Stan Wawrinka and Tennys Sandgren, who, like most of the other fallers, are laboured with their health.

Czechs

Even the Australian Open did not change the fact that Jiri Vesely is the best among the Czechs and he is also the only Czech representative in the world’s top 100. But behind our number one there are several competitors. The closest to Vesely is Tomas Machac, who is currently ranked 116th. In the top 100 we can also find Jiří Lehečka (138th) and Zdeněk Kolář (146th).