The final ATP World Ranking after the finals in London will be led by those players who have already dominated the first Grand Slam tournament of the year.
he 2017 season after the Australian Open was over, however, would not have been enough to get a clear picture of the situation in men’s tennis at the end of the year: Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer lead the world rankings, with a narrowly defeated semi-finalist Grigor Dimitrov finally beating the tempestuous pursuer. The other, Stan Wawrinka, is surprisingly still among the world’s top ten players – despite the fact that the Swiss declared his campaign to be over after the Wimbledon tournament.
Now the annual report is available, of course marked by longer downtimes and other reliable high performers.
The fact that sooner or later Jack Sock or David Goffin would sooner or later be in the top ten seemed foreseeable due to the talents of the two players. Pablo Carreno Busta’s ascent to the Bel Etage, on the other hand, is rather unexpected, despite the constancy shown by the Spaniard, the 26-year-old was also confronted with some very fortunate circumstances: Carreno Busta was able to compete with qualifiers at the US Open in four rounds, after which he was able to compete with a hammered Diego Schwartzman. But: The world ranking list does not lie.
Especially in the case of Alexander Zverev and Dominic Thiem. The latter may have been somewhat disappointed in the second half of the season (especially by himself) – but on the other hand Thiem scored most of his points at a time when Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray were still in action. Thiem defeated the Serbs in Paris in the quarter-finals, Murray a few weeks before in Barcelona. Thiem enters the year 2018 as number five in the world.
Zverev, on the other hand, did even better, so well that he has to be very high on the list for the election of the athlete of the year. Two successes in ATP Masters 1000 tournaments with finals against Djokovic in Rome and Federer in Montréal – these achievements are second to none in the recent history of German tennis.
On the other hand, the results are rather modest for some other professionals – apart from the long-term injured. Nick Kyrgios will close the year 2017 at position 21. The Australian has reached his first Masters finals in Cincinnati, but still managed to take too many time-outs. Richard Gasquet found his rhythm late in life, but he was not spared from injuries either.
From a German point of view, it’s gratifying to see that Philipp Kohlschreiber has regained his place in the top 30 again, which is extremely important for a decent draw in Melbourne. Mischa Zverev can still hope to win the Australian Open as number 33. Peter Gojowczyk has for the first time been the tournament winner in Metz, and the Munich player ends the year as number 61. Florian Mayer and Jan-Lennard Struff have confirmed their positions around rank 50, with Maximilian Torterer and Cedric-Marcel Stebe finishing two more DTB players in the top 100.
For Austria, Dominic Thiem is joined by Gerald Melzer in the Bütt – with strong performances on the Challenger tour in South America, the Lower Austrian has secured the best three-digit position in the world ranking.
Here is the current ATP world ranking list