Melog Rankings: End of February 2016

The tennis schedule is kind of weird.

It's a sport that is played almost year-round, but it has only four events that the casual fans care about, two of which are played within a month of each other despite being on completely different surfaces, allowing very little time to transition between them. And another one is played almost immediately at the beginning of the year, with essentially no time leading up to it. The schedule goes offseason (basically only the month of December), then two weeks of small events, then AUSTRALIAN OPEN!!! And then small events again for the next month.

There are benefits to this, I'm sure; for one thing, it puts the sport's biggest names at center stage right away, which wouldn't necessarily happen without a Slam leading off. (On the other hand, if they moved the Asian swing, including the Shanghai Masters, from October to January and made it part of the ramp-up to the Australian, which would then be held in mid-late February... I'm just saying, that could work.)

But there are also drawbacks, and one of them comes in the sleepy month of February. The tennis stories in January were about Djokovic and Federer and Murray, and then you move into smaller events and the stories are still kind of about those guys, but instead of a Grand Slam, they're about knee surgery and paternity leave and pulling out of moderately important events with eye ailments.

With the big names out of focus for the last four weeks, the casual fan's attention may have wavered - but there's still plenty to intrigue a more dedicated follower of the sport. And foremost on that list this February is a pair of young players who are jetting up the rankings.

Let's go to the numbers...

	Player	Melog	Rank change (last update)	Melog change (last update)	Rank change (start of yr)	Melog change (start of yr)
1	Novak Djokovic	103.9	0	-4.1	0	2.6
2	Andy Murray	65.7	1	-2.2	0	-0.2
3	Roger Federer	65.0	-1	-6.6	0	-0.4
4	Rafael Nadal	36.9	0	-5.3	0	-3.3
5	Tomas Berdych	29.6	2	-1.0	0	-6.9
6	Kei Nishikori	29.2	-1	-2.4	2	-2.4
7	Stanislas Wawrinka	28.7	1	1.4	0	-3.9
8	David Ferrer	26.0	-2	-5.6	-2	-8.1
9	Roberto Bautista Agut	23.1	0	-1.7	2	4.5
10	Richard Gasquet	21.1	0	-1.5	-1	-4.5
11	Milos Raonic	21.0	0	-0.4	-1	2.1
12	Jo Wilfried Tsonga	19.9	0	-1.4	1	2.1
13	John Isner	19.8	0	0.3	1	3.0
14	Philipp Kohlschreiber	18.5	1	-0.1	2	2.7
15	David Goffin	16.9	3	1.1	4	2.7
16	Nick Kyrgios	16.7	7	4.7	8	5.5
17	Gael Monfils	15.6	-3	-3.1	0	0.5
18	Grigor Dimitrov	15.6	3	1.0	3	2.9
19	Gilles Simon	15.2	-3	-2.3	-4	-1.2
20	Marin Cilic	15.1	-1	-0.2	2	3.1
21	Dominic Thiem	14.7	1	1.8	9	6.1
22	Kevin Anderson	13.8	-5	-2.2	-10	-4.4
23	Jack Sock	13.5	-3	-1.2	-3	0.1
24	Alexandr Dolgopolov	10.4	2	0.4	7	1.8
25	Pablo Cuevas	10.3	5	1.7	15	3.9
26	Bernard Tomic	9.7	-1	-1.2	-3	-1.6
27	Gilles Muller	9.1	0	-0.8	-2	-2.0
28	Feliciano Lopez	9.1	7	1.1	4	1.0
29	Fabio Fognini	8.7	-1	-0.6	10	2.1
30	Ivo Karlovic	8.3	-6	-2.8	-12	-5.9
31	Albert Ramos	8.2	3	0.1	5	0.8
32	Jeremy Chardy	8.0	-3	-0.9	-3	-0.8
33	Hyeon Chung	7.4	-2	-1.0	0	-0.6
34	Fernando Verdasco	7.3	-1	-1.0	-7	-2.1
35	Guillermo Garcia Lopez	7.1	2	-0.3	-9	-2.4
36	Steve Johnson	6.8	-4	-1.5	-8	-2.2
37	Viktor Troicki	6.5	-1	-1.0	-3	-1.1
38	Sam Querrey	6.3	11	1.2	5	0.8
39	Thomaz Bellucci	6.2	3	0.1	7	1.0
40	Joao Sousa	6.2	-1	-1.0	2	0.6
41	Marcos Baghdatis	6.1	4	0.9	0	0.1
42	Teymuraz Gabashvili	5.9	-1	-0.3	7	1.2
43	Leonardo Mayer	5.6	-3	-1.0	-5	-1.1
44	Lukas Rosol	5.5	2	0.3	15	2.0
45	Guido Pella	5.3	15	1.5	13	1.7
46	Benoit Paire	5.2	-2	-0.1	1	0.1
47	Martin Klizan	5.1	3	0.1	30	2.4
48	Paolo Lorenzi	5.0	-1	-0.1	27	2.3
49	Juan Monaco	4.8	-11	-2.5	-4	-0.4
50	Andreas Seppi	4.7	-7	-0.7	-15	-2.8
51	Federico Delbonis	4.4	1	0.1	5	0.5
52	Taylor Harry Fritz	4.3	1	0.3	20	1.4
53	Robin Haase	4.3	14	0.7	21	1.5
54	John Millman	4.0	1	0.1	11	0.8
55	Adrian Mannarino	4.0	-4	-0.7	-4	-0.4
56	Andrey Kuznetsov	3.9	10	0.3	35	2.1
57	Nicolas Almagro	3.9	-9	-1.2	-3	-0.2
58	Vasek Pospisil	3.7	-4	-0.3	-14	-1.5
59	Ivan Dodig	3.7	6	0.1	-7	-0.6
60	Mikhail Kukushkin	3.7	-2	-0.2	7	0.6
61	Aljaz Bedene	3.6	-2	-0.2	-11	-1.0
62	Pablo Carreno Busta	3.6	10	0.3	6	0.6
63	Pablo Andujar	3.6	-1	-0.2	-6	-0.2
64	Denis Istomin	3.5	-7	-0.4	-11	-0.6
65	Yen Hsun Lu	3.4	-4	-0.4	-10	-0.5
66	Jiri Vesely	3.4	-2	-0.2	-18	-1.4
67	Dusan Lajovic	3.4	7	0.5	9	0.7
68	Alexander Zverev	3.2	5	0.2	16	1.1
69	Tommy Robredo	3.1	2	-0.2	-3	0.0
70	Pierre Hugues Herbert	3.1	-14	-0.8	11	0.8
71	Thanasi Kokkinakis	3.0	-2	-0.5	-2	0.0
72	Carlos Berlocq	2.9	-9	-0.8	-1	0.0
73	Daniel Munoz De La Nava	2.9	4	0.1	0	0.1
74	Rajeev Ram	2.8	16	0.8	9	0.7
75	Nicolas Mahut	2.8	1	0.0	23	1.3

Welcome to the top 20, Nick Kyrgios - and see you soon, Dominic Thiem!

Both of these youngsters had impressive performances in 2015, albeit of largely different types. Kyrgios secured a trio of wins over top-10 players last year (Roger Federer, Milos Raonic, and Stan Wawrinka), and generally competed well against high level competition, but failed to amass consistent week-in, week-out results (his record for the year was 24-19 with one final, which he lost decisively). Thiem, meanwhile, won 37 matches and three titles, but did so against middling opposition, facing only three top-10 opponents and losing all three times.

This year, they both look to be on the way to addressing their issues, while maintaining their strengths. Thiem snapped up a pair of titles in February, one of which came with a win over Rafael Nadal on clay, which is still at least a little bit of a big deal. He also posted a dominant victory over David Ferrer in Rio, and clinched the Acapulco title (his first on hard courts) with a solid win over Bernard Tomic.

Kyrgios has continued playing well against top players, grabbing a trio of top-10 wins this month (Berdych twice and Gasquet once). And this time, the wins were converted into his first career title, as he came out on top in the absurdly loaded 250-point event in Marseille, sweeping through the week without dropping serve once.

Thiem and Kyrgios have improved their Melog ratings by more than any other player so far this year (not just in the top 75, but among all 873 players who've had at least one Melog-counted match in the last 12 months). And given their youth (Thiem is the veteran of the pair at 22) and obvious talent, it would not be an utter shock to see either or both of them push for top 10 spots this year, in either Melog's rankings or the ATP's (in which Thiem is already up to #14).

That pursuit may well be helped by the utter lack of recent good news involving the current top 10, nine of whom saw their Melog ratings fall within the past fortnight. A lot of that is just things coming off from last year - Federer's knee surgery cost him a chance to defend the title in Dubai, which has historically been one of his best events (and seems to be one of the few places where he can still handle Djokovic). Nadal, meanwhile, had already failed to back up his Buenos Aires title from last year; it just happens to have been played two weeks later in 2015 than it was this time around, and therefore hadn't fallen out of his rating until now.

The really alarming tumble, though, is from David Ferrer, whose Melog rating has taken the most precipitous drop of the year to date. Last year, Ferrer re-established his status as a top player by winning back-to-back 500-point titles in Rio and Acapulco. He played both events again this year, and failed to make so much as a semifinal, getting blown off the court by Thiem in the Rio quaters and losing his second rounder in Acapulco to Alexandr Dolgopolov in straight sets. Ferrer had won three titles at this time last year; so far in 2016, he's yet to make a final out of six events played. And if you're looking for an extra reason for gloom, he also absorbed his first loss in 16 matches against fellow Spaniard Nicolas Almagro in Buenos Aires this month.

So really, you can keep this January and its generally predictable Slam outcome. February gave us some early signs of a generational torch being passed, and that's arguably even cooler.

Speaking of cool things... up next, we have the first round of Davis Cup, which is currently slated to include both Kyrgios and Thiem (although Thiem's appearance will not be at the World Group level). Also, you know, there's Djokovic and Murray and Berdych and Nishikori and Raonic and Kohlschreiber and the usual horde of excellent French players. And after that, it's Indian Wells, the first of the two-week March Masters events. So we'll be back in three weeks to see what those two very different but very important events have done to the ratings.