Melog Rankings: Post-Indian Wells 2016

Since we last checked in on present-day tennis, Novak Djokovic has won his third consecutive title at Indian Wells. His performance in the final against a possibly-injured Milos Raonic was particularly dominant, as he won 27 of the 30 points on Raonic's second serve - far and away the worst second-serve performance of Raonic's career, and the second-best Djokovic has ever done on an opponent's second serve (for matches in which Tennis Abstract has the data). Given that Raonic is one of the best servers on tour... yeah, Novak had a good match there.

His fellow highly-ranked players didn't fare quite as well, however. Andy Murray lost in the round of 32 to Federico Delbonis, and Roger Federer missed the tournament entirely due to injury. So let's see how the overall ratings have changed in the last three weeks (remember, we've also seen the first round of Davis Cup play since the last update):

As always, numbers first.

	Player	Melog	Rank change (last update)	Melog change (last update)	Rank change (start of yr)	Melog change (start of yr)
1	Novak Djokovic	104.5	0	0.6	0	3.2
2	Andy Murray	63.0	0	-2.7	0	-2.8
3	Roger Federer	60.8	0	-4.2	0	-4.6
4	Rafael Nadal	38.6	0	1.7	0	-1.7
5	Stanislas Wawrinka	31.0	2	2.3	2	-1.6
6	Kei Nishikori	30.3	0	1.1	2	-1.3
7	Tomas Berdych	28.8	-2	-0.8	-2	-7.8
8	David Ferrer	26.5	0	0.5	-2	-7.6
9	Roberto Bautista Agut	23.3	0	0.2	2	4.7
10	Jo Wilfried Tsonga	22.9	2	3.0	3	5.1
11	Richard Gasquet	22.9	-1	1.7	-2	-2.7
12	John Isner	22.3	1	2.5	2	5.5
13	Philipp Kohlschreiber	21.0	1	2.5	3	5.3
14	Milos Raonic	19.7	-3	-1.3	-4	0.8
15	David Goffin	19.6	0	2.7	4	5.4
16	Marin Cilic	17.9	4	2.8	6	5.9
17	Gael Monfils	17.5	0	1.8	0	2.4
18	Dominic Thiem	16.8	3	2.1	12	8.1
19	Nick Kyrgios	16.0	-3	-0.7	5	4.7
20	Gilles Simon	15.9	-1	0.7	-5	-0.5
21	Grigor Dimitrov	15.3	-3	-0.3	0	2.6
22	Kevin Anderson	14.0	0	0.2	-10	-4.2
23	Jack Sock	12.6	0	-0.9	-3	-0.8
24	Alexandr Dolgopolov	10.4	0	0.0	7	1.8
25	Pablo Cuevas	10.3	0	0.0	15	4.0
26	Fabio Fognini	9.8	3	1.1	13	3.2
27	Feliciano Lopez	9.5	1	0.4	5	1.3
28	Ivo Karlovic	8.9	2	0.6	-10	-5.3
29	Bernard Tomic	8.7	-3	-1.0	-6	-2.6
30	Gilles Muller	8.7	-3	-0.5	-5	-2.4
31	Jeremy Chardy	8.3	1	0.4	-2	-0.4
32	Albert Ramos	8.3	-1	0.1	4	0.9
33	Guillermo Garcia Lopez	7.3	2	0.2	-7	-2.2
34	Hyeon Chung	7.2	-1	-0.2	-1	-0.8
35	Fernando Verdasco	7.1	-1	-0.1	-8	-2.2
36	Steve Johnson	7.1	0	0.3	-8	-1.9
37	Guido Pella	7.1	8	1.7	21	3.4
38	Leonardo Mayer	7.0	5	1.4	0	0.3
39	Thomaz Bellucci	6.9	0	0.7	7	1.7
40	Joao Sousa	6.8	0	0.6	2	1.2
41	Sam Querrey	6.7	-3	0.5	2	1.2
42	Teymuraz Gabashvili	6.2	0	0.2	7	1.5
43	Viktor Troicki	6.1	-6	-0.4	-9	-1.5
44	Marcos Baghdatis	5.9	-3	-0.2	-3	-0.1
45	Lukas Rosol	5.5	-1	0.0	14	2.0
46	John Millman	5.0	8	1.0	19	1.8
47	Benoit Paire	5.0	-1	-0.2	0	-0.1
48	Paolo Lorenzi	5.0	0	0.0	27	2.3
49	Andrey Kuznetsov	5.0	7	1.1	42	3.2
50	Martin Klizan	5.0	-3	-0.1	27	2.3
51	Andreas Seppi	5.0	-1	0.2	-16	-2.5
52	Federico Delbonis	4.9	-1	0.5	4	1.0
53	Alexander Zverev	4.4	15	1.1	31	2.2
54	Mikhail Kukushkin	4.3	6	0.6	13	1.2
55	Pablo Carreno Busta	4.3	7	0.7	13	1.3
56	Adrian Mannarino	4.1	-1	0.1	-5	-0.3
57	Taylor Harry Fritz	4.0	-5	-0.3	15	1.2
58	Pablo Andujar	4.0	5	0.4	-1	0.2
59	Juan Monaco	3.9	-10	-0.9	-14	-1.3
60	Nicolas Almagro	3.9	-3	0.0	-6	-0.2
61	Denis Istomin	3.9	3	0.3	-8	-0.3
62	Robin Haase	3.8	-9	-0.4	12	1.1
63	Borna Coric	3.7	14	1.2	-2	0.4
64	Marcel Granollers	3.7	39	2.2	37	2.4
65	Jiri Vesely	3.6	1	0.2	-17	-1.2
66	Yen Hsun Lu	3.5	-1	0.1	-11	-0.4
67	Tommy Robredo	3.5	2	0.4	-1	0.4
68	Carlos Berlocq	3.5	4	0.6	3	0.6
69	Ivan Dodig	3.4	-10	-0.3	-17	-0.9
70	Dusan Lajovic	3.3	-3	0.0	6	0.7
71	Vasek Pospisil	3.3	-13	-0.5	-27	-2.0
72	Paul Henri Mathieu	3.0	8	0.6	13	1.0
73	Rajeev Ram	2.9	1	0.1	10	0.8
74	Nicolas Mahut	2.8	1	0.1	24	1.4
75	Pierre Hugues Herbert	2.7	-5	-0.4	6	0.3

There are some good-sized changes from last time, notably including a big leap forward from young star Alexander Zverev, and Dominic Thiem joining the top 20 (as kind of predicted in the last update). But for this week, I'm going to focus more on the columns to the right, the changes since the beginning of the year. Because those are really starting to stick out.

In the end-of-season ratings for 2015, there was a notable gap between the top group and everyone else; the top 8 players (still the same eight as above) all had ratings over 30, and only one player (Richard Gasquet) was between 20 and 30.

The current table tells a different story. Seven of the top eight players have had their Melog ratings drop since the beginning of the year, with Tomas Berdych and David Ferrer taking precipitous tumbles so far. Meanwhile, four more players have cleared the 20 threshold, and two more are right on the verge of doing so. (For the sake of completeness, the number of ratings of 10 or higher has remained the same, at 25; ratings of 5 or higher have gone from 47 to 51.)

All told, the number of ratings between 20 and 30 has gone from one to seven since the beginning of the year, and if you want to make it sound more impressive by picking obviously arbitrary thresholds, using 19 to 31 puts the increase at 1 to 11. This could mean a few things - it could mean the younger generation is ready to at least move into the second tier (competing for Slam semis and smaller titles on a regular basis), although most of the players who are in the 19-31 rating group are 25 or older. It could also mean the structure of the sport is becoming slightly less stratified, leaving more players with the possibility of making deep runs in key events. (The top 8 in the ATP's year-to-date rankings so far include Raonic, Dominic Thiem, Roberto Bautista Agut, and Pablo Cuevas, which probably mostly means it's a good thing the rankings aren't based on less than 3 months' worth of data, but it's still at least interesting. For the sake of comparison, the top 8 at this point last year included seven of the final top 8, with Nadal checking in at #9 - but there were also 6 players with at least 1400 points already, whereas this year has only 3.)

Or it could just mean that a few of the top players have had a rough couple of months and they'll right the ship as the year goes on. Time, as it usually does, will tell.

Up next, we have the second two-week Masters event, this one in Miami. Just like at Indian Wells, Djokovic is a two-time defending titlist, and players like Berdych (semifinal), Nishikori (quarterfinal), and Ferrer (quarterfinal) also produced strong results there in 2015. If those results aren't replaced with efforts of similar quality, we could see some actual new faces getting closer to the top sooner than later.