Melog rankings: Post-Australian Open 2015

So the men's Australian Open final was played yesterday. Given that Novak Djokovic won his fifth title at the event, an Open Era record, and cemented his current stranglehold on the #1 ranking in the process, it was probably the biggest sports story of the day, right?

Okay, maybe not. But it's still a pretty big deal, tennis-wise. So let's see what the Melog ratings think of the changes from last year's Australian to this year's.


Here are the top 50:

Rank	Player	Melog	Rank change	Melog change
1	Novak Djokovic	52.0	0	2.1
2	Roger Federer	36.7	0	-3.6
3	Rafael Nadal	22.6	0	-2.8
4	Andy Murray	20.9	0	0.3
5	David Ferrer	18.4	0	-0.6
6	Kei Nishikori	18.2	0	0.3
7	Tomas Berdych	14.8	0	-1.2
8	Milos Raonic	12.9	2	0.7
9	Stan Wawrinka	11.9	-1	-1.6
10	Grigor Dimitrov	11.7	-1	-0.6
11	Marin Cilic	11.6	0	0.4
12	Gael Monfils	7.4	0	-0.6
13	Jo-Wilfried Tsonga	6.2	0	-1.4
14	Tommy Robredo	6.0	0	-0.5
15	David Goffin	5.9	0	-0.1
16	Ernests Gulbis	5.7	0	-0.1
17	Roberto Bautista Agut	5.4	0	-0.2
18	Kevin Anderson	5.2	1	0.4
19	Philipp Kohlschreiber	4.6	-1	-0.2
20	Richard Gasquet	3.8	1	0.0
21	Gilles Simon	3.6	1	0.8
22	Alexandr Dolgopolov	3.5	-2	-0.6
23	Viktor Troicki	3.4	0	0.7
24	Martin Klizan	2.6	0	0.2
25	Radek Stepanek	2.6	4	0.6
26	Jack Sock	2.5	2	0.3
27	John Isner	2.4	-2	0.2
28	Steve Darcis	2.3	-1	0.1
29	Adrian Mannarino	2.3	-3	0.0
30	Marcos Baghdatis	2.0	13	0.8
31	Fernando Verdasco	2.0	5	0.3
32	Andreas Seppi	1.9	17	1.0
33	Tommy Haas	1.8	4	0.3
34	Ivo Karlovic	1.8	4	0.3
35	Sam Querrey	1.8	-5	-0.1
36	Nick Kyrgios	1.8	10	0.7
37	Jiri Vesely	1.7	-5	-0.1
38	Leonardo Mayer	1.7	-4	-0.1
39	Gilles Muller	1.6	9	0.6
40	Julien Benneteau	1.6	-7	-0.2
41	Pablo Cuevas	1.5	-10	-0.4
42	Feliciano Lopez	1.5	2	0.2
43	Steve Johnson	1.4	13	0.7
44	Jeremy Chardy	1.3	-9	-0.4
45	Nicolas Almagro	1.2	-3	-0.1
46	Dominic Thiem	1.2	-1	0.1
47	John Millman	1.1	-6	-0.3
48	Pablo Andujar	0.9	-8	-0.5
49	Juan Martin del Potro	0.9	2	0.1
50	Diego Schwartzman	0.9	14	0.4

At the top, Djokovic's score increases, while Federer and Nadal both slide; given that Djokovic went from the quarterfinals last year to the title this year, while Nadal exchanged a final for a quarter and Federer swapped a semi for an embarrassing third-round loss, none of that is too surprising.

Federer's trouble is compounded by the fact that the first round of last year's Davis Cup has also been dropped from the rankings. This is probably also what keeps Murray from leapfrogging Nadal, as he scored two routine wins against overmatched Americans in last year's early DC action. Andy and Rafa both have a couple of appearances scheduled in February; if they both play this month like they did last month, it wouldn't surprise me a bit if Murray passes Nadal before the Indian Wells-Miami swing in March.

A bit further down, Stan Wawrinka drops somewhat, although not as much as you might expect; he didn't defend last year's stunning title run, but he did make the semis, with a straight-set win over Nishikori and a close loss to Djokovic along the way. On the other hand, he also drops an easy 2014 DC first rounder, and that's enough for Milos Raonic to move past him.

There are some more substantial shakeups lower down. Marcos Baghdatis and Andreas Seppi both sprint upward, with Seppi upsetting Federer in the third round and holding match points in the ensuing clash with Nick Kyrgios before losing, and Baghdatis destroying David Goffin in the second round, then extending Grigor Dimitrov to five sets in the third. Kyrgios himself also climbs, courtesy of his second Grand Slam quarterfinal appearance as a teenager. And the top 50 welcomes three new members this week, with Steve Johnson (made the third round, lost to Nishikori), Juan Martin del Potro (stays about the same despite last year's second round performance vanishing), and Diego Schwartzman all joining the ranks.

Schwartzman is an odd one here, actually. He lost in the first round of the Australian; it was a close four-set loss to the solid Kevin Anderson, but it's still a loss. Moreover, a semifinal in the 2014 iteration of the Bucaramanga Challenger event disappears from his list of counted results this week. But it turns out that the Bucaramanga run was a pretty unimpressive one; Schwartzman took three sets to beat each of a trio of pretty unimpressive opponents, then got hammered by Alejandro Falla in the semis. The deletion of those matches from Schwartzman's list of accomplishments within the last year appears to help him out enough to provide a 14-spot boost in a closely-packed area of the rankings.

Three new players in the top 50, of course, requires that three players be bumped from their spots. The three departures are Denis Istomin, Carlos Berlocq, and... Fabio Fognini, who still resides in the ATP's top 25, and incidentally, was half of the men's doubles team that just won the Australian Open. In singles, however, he absorbed a punishing first-round loss to Alejandro Gonzalez, which took the place of a run to the fourth round in last year's event. Throw in the erasure of a pair of good wins in the Davis Cup's first round, and you have the explanation for his decline here. And given that the beginning of last February brought Fognini's only title of 2014 (including wins over top-50 members Leonardo Mayer and Nicolas Almagro), and he's not defending that title this week, Fabio may not be rejoining the Melog top 50 any time soon.

So that's what happens after the year's first Slam. Up next, tennis settles into its widely-ignored regular season; February will see a full dozen ATP World Tour events played, some of which will include a smattering of top players - but none of them reach as high as the Masters level that brings all of the world's best together at once. Two weeks from now, we'll check in and see how the first six of those tournaments have changed things.