2014 Melog 75 Tennis Rankings

The last decade-plus of men’s professional tennis has been dominated by four players: Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic, and Andy Murray. These men combined to win every Grand Slam but one from the 2005 French Open through the end of 2013.

This remarkable stretch of hegemony was always going to end eventually; time always wins, after all. 2014 saw the forming of the initial cracks in the Big Four’s dominance, with the season producing multiple first-time Grand Slam winners (Stan Wawrinka and Marin Cilic) for the first time since 2003. Throw in breakout years from youngsters like US Open finalist Kei Nishikori and Wimbledon semifinalists Milos Raonic and Grigor Dimitrov, and you’ve got a worthy set of challengers to the once-impregnable upper echelon.

Meanwhile, some members of the Big Four started to show seams. Nadal lost in Barcelona for the first time in over a decade, absorbed a similarly early exit in Monte Carlo, and narrowly squeezed out clay titles in Rio (facing down multiple match points in the semifinals) and Madrid (falling behind by a set and a break until an injury to Nishikori allowed Nadal to rally, and eventually forced his opponent to withdraw); he then missed the North American hard court swing (including the US Open) due to injury, and accomplished little after returning to the court in September. But at least Rafa won the French Open again, and made the Australian Open final. Murray didn’t make a single final at any level of the tour between his historic Wimbledon triumph in 2013 and the 250-point event in Shenzen in September of this year, a 14-month gap.

The group’s other two members fared rather better; Federer rallied from an injury-dampened 2013 to win a quintet of titles and lead Switzerland to its first-ever Davis Cup crown, while Djokovic bested Federer in a classic Wimbledon final and took seven total titles in securing the ATP’s #1 spot for the third time. Even these two, however, had their moments of frailty; Djokovic’s streak of 14 Grand Slam semifinals was broken by Wawrinka in Melbourne, while Federer lost to the mercurial Ernests Gulbis in the round of 16 at Roland Garros. Both men would also absorb the occasional puzzling defeat in Masters events, with Djokovic’s loss to Tommy Robredo in Cincinnati and Federer's defeat by Jeremy Chardy in Rome serving as particular standouts. Great as they were, neither was quite as ironclad as they’d once been.

So with that in mind, let’s dust off the Melog 75 tennis ranking system (the initial form of which was laid out in these three posts; I have since made a couple of modifications that don’t really affect the top players at all, though I still think they’re fairly important and can go into further detail if there’s any interest), and see who it thinks were the best players of 2014:

1.     Novak Djokovic 48.1

2.     Roger Federer 37.1

3.     Rafael Nadal 27.2

4.     Andy Murray 19.9

Fantastic. Even when you think they might not be the best, they still are. All of them have had much better years in the past (even Djokovic is notably down from his titanic 2011-13 level), but they’re still as good as anyone, and maybe better.

Let’s finish out the top 11 (not just the top 10, because the top 11 very much separated themselves from the pack this year):

5.     David Ferrer 16.4

6.     Kei Nishikori 16.2

7.     Stan Wawrinka 13.0

8.     Tomas Berdych 12.9

9.     Grigor Dimitrov 11.8

10.   Milos Raonic 11.2

11.   Marin Cilic 10.6

Ferrer and Nishikori are very close. Nishikori was narrowly better when on the court (he was nearly even with Murray in that regard), but he skipped some events due to injury, while Ferrer misses big tournaments about as often as the sun misses sunrise. The ATP rankings had the 32-year-old Ferrer falling out of the top 8 this season; Melog thinks that age hasn’t quite caught up to him yet.

The rest of the group is fairly tightly bunched. The two debut Slam champions weren’t necessarily better than the other guys; both of them were wildly inconsistent and absorbed as many puzzling defeats as anyone in this group. They just picked the right time to put two excellent weeks together.

Moving on down the list…

12.   Gael Monfils 9.1

Monfils had quite a year, in a very Monfils way. He played two Grand Slam quarterfinals, and had a member of the Big Four on the ropes in both of them – rallying from a two-set deficit to even his match against Murray at the French Open with the home crowd behind him, and taking a two-set lead against Federer at the US Open, eventually holding match points. Both times, he succumbed. Fittingly, his other two Grand Slam losses were to Nadal (in the third round at the Australian) and Djok… wait, the Wimbledon loss was to Czech youngster Jiri Vesely in the second round. That would have been cool, though.

13.   Jo-Wilfried Tsonga 7.5

14.   Ernests Gulbis 6.2

15.   Tommy Robredo 6.0

16.   David Goffin 5.9

That’s three guys who absorbed a lot of not-quite this year (Robredo, in particular, held a total of ten match points in two finals against Murray, and lost both of them), followed by Goffin, whose second half of 2014 was one of my favorite stories of the year. After his loss at Wimbledon (to Murray), Goffin stepped down to the Challenger level, and ran off three consecutive titles without dropping a set. He returned to the main tour and won the first title of his career, eventually extending his winning streak to 25. He bageled Dimitrov in the first set of their third-rounder at the US Open before losing, but then went on to a second World Tour title shortly afterward, followed that with a fourth Challenger title, and eventually also made the final of a 500-point event in Basel, losing to Federer there.

Goffin’s work on the Challenger tour in 2014 is the most impressive season any player has had on that level in the seven full years I’ve entered (which is a topic I may explore further at some point). Moreover, his late-season World Tour results gave further evidence of a high level of play. I’ll be extremely curious to see how he performs going forward.

23. John Isner 2.2

25. Jack Sock 2.0

27. Sam Querrey 1.9

I’m skipping ahead a bit here, with the most notable omission being the out-of-nowhere excellence of #17 Roberto Bautista Agut. But being an American, I believe I’m bound by law to highlight where the Americans appear in tennis rankings, even if that answer is rather depressing.

Except, in this case, it’s not. Or at least it’s not too bad, given the general state of American men’s tennis. Jack Sock and Sam Querrey are considerably higher than I’d have expected, and Sock, in particular, is young enough to still be considered on the rise. It would not surprise me too much if John Isner’s tenure as the US #1 ends at some point in 2015.

Also notable:

29. Pablo Cuevas 1.7

30. Viktor Troicki 1.5

35. Adrian Mannarino 1.4

Outside of Goffin and #24 Martin Klizan, these are your top players who spent significant time on the Challenger tour this year. Cuevas was coming back from a long-term injury and had a wonderful year, winning his first two World Tour titles along with four Challengers; Troicki was returning from a year-long suspension, and also did rather well for himself.

39. Nicolas Almagro 1.3

40. Tommy Haas 1.3

41. Juan Martin del Potro 1.2

That’s a nice set of players who had their seasons cut short by injury in 2014. All of them will bear watching next year, because they’re all at some sort of crossroads in their comebacks. In particular, del Potro is trying to regain his status as one of the best players in the world, while Haas is simply hoping to be able to play at something close to his accustomed level even as his 37^th birthday approaches in April.

43. Nick Kyrgios 1.0

49. Dominic Thiem 0.8

52. Jiri Vesely 0.7

73. Borna Coric 0.0

This is the best of the young-to-very-young crowd. Coric, in particular, broke into the ATP top 100 before turning 18, and has automatic entry into the upcoming Australian Open, and I’m very much looking forward to the unfolding of his career.

There will be plenty of time to watch Coric – and everyone else – as the 2015 tennis season unfolds. And this year, I’m planning to say more about that season as it occurs. In fact, my hope is to post updates to these rankings on a quasi-biweekly schedule, using the same last-52-weeks structure that the ATP does. Given that I use the #75 player as a baseline, the rankings aren’t likely to be of a great deal of use outside of the top 50 – and therefore, the top 50 is what I will post.

So for starters, here are the top 50 players of 2014 (and therefore, the top 50 at the beginning of the 2015 season) by the Melog 75 method:

Rank	Player	Melog Rating
1	Novak Djokovic	48.1
2	Roger Federer	37.1
3	Rafael Nadal	27.2
4	Andy Murray	19.9
5	David Ferrer	16.4
6	Kei Nishikori	16.2
7	Stan Wawrinka	13.0
8	Tomas Berdych	12.9
9	Grigor Dimitrov	11.8
10	Milos Raonic	11.2
11	Marin Cilic	10.6
12	Gael Monfils	9.1
13	Jo-Wilfried Tsonga	7.5
14	Ernests Gulbis	6.2
15	Tommy Robredo	6.0
16	David Goffin	5.9
17	Roberto Bautista Agut	5.7
18	Philipp Kohlschreiber	5.4
19	Kevin Anderson	4.1
20	Alexandr Dolgopolov	3.5
21	Richard Gasquet	3.2
22	Gilles Simon	2.7
23	John Isner	2.2
24	Martin Klizan	2.1
25	Jack Sock	2.0
26	Radek Stepanek	1.9
27	Sam Querrey	1.9
28	Julien Benneteau	1.7
29	Pablo Cuevas	1.7
30	Viktor Troicki	1.5
31	Denis Istomin	1.5
32	Fernando Verdasco	1.5
33	Steve Darcis	1.4
34	Jeremy Chardy	1.4
35	Adrian Mannarino	1.4
36	Leonardo Mayer	1.3
37	Fabio Fognini	1.3
38	Nicolas Almagro	1.3
39	Tommy Haas	1.3
40	Juan Martin del Potro	1.2
41	Feliciano Lopez	1.1
42	Marcos Baghdatis	1.1
43	Nick Kyrgios	1.0
44	John Millman	0.9
45	Ivo Karlovic	0.9
46	Pablo Andujar	0.9
47	Marinko Matosevic	0.9
48	Carlos Berlocq	0.8
49	Dominic Thiem	0.8
50	Gilles Muller	0.8