Melog Rankings: Post-February 2015

We've come to the conclusion of the month on the tennis calendar that has the biggest disparity between activity and attention. There were 12 total events in February, and every player in the top 10 participated in at least one; if you leave out Djokovic and Federer, the rest of the top 10 all played two or more.

So let's see where our top 50 stand as the tennis world braces for a return to... maybe not the spotlight, but at least a bit of increased newsworthiness.

Here's the table:

Rank	Player	Melog	Rank change	Melog change
1	Novak Djokovic	53.4	0	0.7
2	Roger Federer	37.2	0	0.1
3	Rafael Nadal	24.0	0	1.0
4	Andy Murray	20.3	0	-0.7
5	Kei Nishikori	18.8	0	1.1
6	David Ferrer	18.2	0	1.2
7	Tomas Berdych	13.9	0	-1.3
8	Milos Raonic	13.8	0	0.1
9	Stan Wawrinka	13.2	0	-0.2
10	Grigor Dimitrov	9.9	0	-2.0
11	Gael Monfils	8.9	1	1.4
12	Marin Cilic	7.9	-1	-1.8
13	David Goffin	6.5	1	0.2
14	Jo-Wilfried Tsonga	6.5	-1	0.1
15	Roberto Bautista Agut	6.0	1	0.3
16	Tommy Robredo	5.2	1	-0.4
17	Kevin Anderson	4.6	-2	-1.2
18	Richard Gasquet	4.6	1	0.0
19	Gilles Simon	4.2	1	-0.3
20	Sam Querrey	3.4	4	0.6
21	Philipp Kohlschreiber	3.3	0	-0.6
22	Viktor Troicki	3.1	1	-0.2
23	Ernests Gulbis	2.8	-5	-2.5
24	Marcos Baghdatis	2.7	13	0.7
25	Pablo Cuevas	2.7	11	0.7
26	Fernando Verdasco	2.6	2	0.2
27	Andreas Seppi	2.6	4	0.4
28	Jack Sock	2.5	1	0.2
29	Radek Stepanek	2.5	-3	-0.2
30	Gilles Muller	2.4	2	0.3
31	John Isner	2.4	-4	-0.1
32	Adrian Mannarino	2.4	1	0.2
33	Leonardo Mayer	2.4	9	0.6
34	Alexandr Dolgopolov	2.3	-12	-1.0
35	Steve Darcis	2.3	-10	-0.5
36	Ivo Karlovic	2.2	5	0.4
37	Nicolas Almagro	2.1	8	0.9
38	Nick Kyrgios	2.0	-4	-0.1
39	Tommy Haas	1.9	-4	-0.1
40	Bernard Tomic	1.7	4	0.5
41	Julien Benneteau	1.7	-3	-0.2
42	Guillermo Garcia Lopez	1.7	1	0.0
43	Martin Klizan	1.7	-13	-0.7
44	Jiri Vesely	1.6	-5	-0.2
45	Feliciano Lopez	1.4	-5	-0.4
46	Jeremy Chardy	1.4	0	0.2
47	Juan Monaco	1.4	11	0.8
48	Simone Bolelli	1.3	4	0.3
49	Steve Johnson	1.1	-2	0.0
50	Carlos Berlocq	1.1	5	0.4

Not too much movement at the top, despite everyone being in action. Djokovic replaces a Dubai semifinal last year with a final this year; he lost to Federer both times, but this year adds a win over Tomas Berdych. Nadal's Rio title last season is gone, but he made the semis this year and adds a title in Buenos Aires, where he didn't play last season. Murray replaces an Acapulco semifinal (and a close loss to Dimitrov) with a Dubai quarterfinal (and a blowout loss to Croatian teenager Borna Coric), so he suffers a bit.

Further down, Kei Nishikori played pretty well in making the Acapulco final, and David Ferrer played marvelously in winning the titles in both Rio and Acapulco, and so both of them are now staring down potential entry into the top four at some point. Berdych's Dubai went less well this year than it did last year, but the much larger dropoff comes from Grigor Dimitrov, who won Acapulco last year and lost to qualifier Ryan Harrison in the second round this year. Still, the ordinal ranking of the top 10 remains exactly the same as it was two weeks ago.

After that, everything is completely different. Gael Monfils becomes the first player to break into the top 11, making a final in Marseille (and arguably outplaying Gilles Simon in the match despite losing) while Marin Cilic drops his 2014 Delray Beach title. Kevin Anderson made the finals in both Delray and Acapulco last year, and lost earlier in both events this season, costing him some substantial ground. And Ernests Gulbis... I'm not even sure what to say about him at this point. Gulbis is now 0-5 for 2015, and has not been terribly competitive in most of his matches against relatively mediocre opposition. Suffice it to say that his dropoff so far this season has been huge, and unless he gets his game together, his slide is not going to end here.

Moving to the lower half of the chart, there are three players whose rankings declined by 10 or more spots this week. Alexandr Dolgopolov didn't play badly over the last fortnight, but in 2014, he ran a clay court gauntlet of Almagro, Fognini, and Ferrer to make the Rio final, where he played a reasonably competitive match against Nadal. Quarterfinals in Delray and Acapulco don't replace that production (especially when he made the Acapulco semis last year as well). Martin Klizan's results over the past two weeks haven't been hugely worse than they were last year - but they have been worse, and the Melog system will penalize you for doing things like losing a set 6-0 even if you win the match (as Klizan did in the Rio first round this year).

The interesting case, however, is Steve Darcis, who did not play at all in February of last year (or until June, actually), and made a semifinal at the Wroclaw challenger the week before last. The ATP rankings move him up for that, as something is always considered better than nothing. The Melog system, however, sees close wins (and eventually a loss) against lackluster competition; Darcis's production over the preceding months had suggested that he'd do better, and he loses ground as a result of failing to maintain that level.

On the brighter side, there are also three jumps of 10 or more spots. Pablo Cuevas's pair of quarterfinals over the last two weeks may not seem like much, but they take the places of second- and first-round defeats last season, and one of his losses this time around was a three-set match against Nadal. Marcos Baghdatis moves up as well, and with similarly incremental reasons - most notably a first-round win over David Goffin in Dubai this week.

Juan Monaco's progress is more obvious, thanks to a Rio quarterfinal (losing to Ferrer) and a Buenos Aires final (beating Cuevas and Almagro, losing to Nadal). He therefore takes the largest leap of the three players who joined the top 50 this week. The other two were Simone Bolelli and Carlos Berlocq, both of whom have hung around this area all year. The ousted players are Dominic Thiem (falling all the way to 51), John Millman (53), and Ivan Dodig (55).

And that's February. After a month of twelve tournaments on the ATP World Tour, March will see all of two - but they're big ones, the 96-man Indian Wells and Miami Masters events. Before Indian Wells, we'll also see the first round of Davis Cup action for the year, which means that the next update to these rankings will be published in three weeks rather than two.