Melog Rankings: Post-French Open 2016

Novak Djokovic won the French Open yesterday. That completes not just the career Slam, but also the consecutive Slam; he currently holds all four Grand Slam titles in men's singles, which nobody has done since Rod Laver, who completed the feat the same year that man first walked on the moon.

Djokovic was already a titan of the game in historic terms, and his accomplishment of a feat that neither of his great rivals (Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal) ever managed indicates that he may well be priming for a run at the title of greatest player ever.

We'll get to that more in another post, as we update Grand Slam Scores from the Roland Garros results. For now, let's take a look at the current Melog ratings and see if we can figure out why the greatest moment of Djokovic's career caused his rating to... drop?

	Player	Melog	Rank change (last update)	Melog change (last update)	Rank change (start of yr)	Melog change (start of yr)
1	Novak Djokovic	93.2	0	-2.9	0	-8.1
2	Andy Murray	55.0	0	-4.7	0	-10.8
3	Roger Federer	49.6	0	-5.4	0	-15.8
4	Rafael Nadal	39.8	0	-4.1	0	-0.5
5	Kei Nishikori	28.0	1	-3.1	3	-3.5
6	Stanislas Wawrinka	25.7	-1	-6.7	1	-6.9
7	Richard Gasquet	23.5	1	1.5	2	-2.1
8	David Goffin	22.3	1	0.4	11	8.2
9	Tomas Berdych	21.7	1	0.0	-4	-14.8
10	Dominic Thiem	20.7	2	1.1	20	12.1
11	Roberto Bautista Agut	19.8	5	1.4	0	1.3
12	Jo Wilfried Tsonga	19.1	-5	-4.6	1	1.3
13	Milos Raonic	18.4	2	-0.6	-3	-0.5
14	Philipp Kohlschreiber	17.6	-3	-3.0	2	1.8
15	Nick Kyrgios	16.8	3	-1.1	9	5.6
16	Gael Monfils	16.2	-3	-3.0	1	1.1
17	Marin Cilic	15.4	-3	-3.8	5	3.3
18	David Ferrer	15.0	1	-2.1	-12	-19.1
19	Gilles Simon	14.8	-2	-3.3	-4	-1.6
20	John Isner	14.2	0	-0.6	-6	-2.6
21	Grigor Dimitrov	11.1	0	-0.7	0	-1.6
22	Albert Ramos	9.5	7	1.3	14	2.1
23	Jack Sock	9.1	0	-2.0	-3	-4.3
24	Feliciano Lopez	9.1	2	-0.1	8	0.9
25	Kevin Anderson	9.0	-3	-2.7	-13	-9.2
26	Marcos Baghdatis	8.5	5	0.7	15	2.5
27	Gilles Muller	8.2	-2	-1.2	-2	-2.8
28	Fernando Verdasco	8.1	6	0.6	-1	-1.3
29	Ivo Karlovic	7.9	-1	-0.7	-11	-6.3
30	Pablo Cuevas	7.7	-6	-2.0	10	1.3
31	Fabio Fognini	7.7	-4	-1.5	8	1.1
32	Guido Pella	7.3	4	0.7	26	3.6
33	Bernard Tomic	7.1	-3	-1.1	-10	-4.2
34	Alexandr Dolgopolov	6.7	-2	-1.0	-3	-1.9
35	Andrey Kuznetsov	6.5	0	-0.7	56	4.7
36	Viktor Troicki	6.2	6	0.6	-2	-1.4
37	Jeremy Chardy	5.7	-4	-1.8	-8	-3.1
38	Alexander Zverev	5.6	5	0.0	46	3.4
39	John Millman	5.5	1	-0.3	26	2.3
40	Steve Johnson	5.4	-3	-1.1	-12	-3.6
41	Joao Sousa	4.9	-3	-1.5	1	-0.6
42	Pablo Carreno Busta	4.9	-1	-1.0	26	1.9
43	Nicolas Almagro	4.7	15	0.7	11	0.6
44	Mikhail Kukushkin	4.5	15	0.7	23	1.4
45	Andreas Seppi	4.5	-1	-0.6	-10	-3.0
46	Federico Delbonis	4.5	0	-0.5	10	0.6
47	Borna Coric	4.2	6	0.0	14	0.9
48	Benoit Paire	4.2	-9	-2.1	-1	-1.0
49	Denis Istomin	3.9	-1	-0.6	4	-0.2
50	Leonardo Mayer	3.8	-5	-1.3	-12	-2.9
51	Kyle Edmund	3.8	0	-0.5	48	2.4
52	Guillermo Garcia Lopez	3.7	0	-0.5	-26	-5.8
53	Marcel Granollers	3.6	2	-0.5	48	2.3
54	Juan Monaco	3.6	3	-0.4	-9	-1.6
55	Carlos Berlocq	3.5	11	0.0	16	0.6
56	Adrian Mannarino	3.3	8	-0.3	-5	-1.1
57	Ivan Dodig	3.3	6	-0.4	-5	-1.0
58	Sam Querrey	3.2	-8	-1.2	-15	-2.3
59	Lucas Pouille	3.1	-5	-1.1	28	1.1
60	Pierre Hugues Herbert	3.0	5	-0.6	21	0.6
61	Ricardas Berankis	3.0	7	-0.4	32	1.2
62	Damir Dzumhur	2.9	-13	-1.6	32	1.2
63	Paolo Lorenzi	2.8	-16	-1.9	12	0.1
64	Taylor Harry Fritz	2.8	-2	-0.9	8	-0.1
65	Martin Klizan	2.8	4	-0.6	12	0.1
66	Jiri Vesely	2.8	-10	-1.3	-18	-2.0
67	Paul Henri Mathieu	2.7	4	-0.3	18	0.7
68	Juan Martin Del Potro	2.7	8	-0.1	36	1.6
69	Thomaz Bellucci	2.7	-8	-1.0	-23	-2.5
70	Guido Andreozzi	2.7	22	0.9	69	2.5
71	Lukas Rosol	2.6	-11	-1.2	-12	-0.9
72	Denis Kudla	2.6	2	-0.4	18	0.8
73	Hyeon Chung	2.5	-6	-0.9	-40	-5.5
74	Vasek Pospisil	2.4	3	-0.4	-30	-2.8
75	Dudi Sela	2.4	0	-0.4	17	0.7

Yes, that is Djokovic's rating getting lower, despite his winning a tournament he did not win last year. So... what the heck?

The answer comes from the next few rows in the table. Note that while Novak's score declines somewhat, it declines by less than the scores of all of the other players in the top 6. Several other highly-rated players also had rough times of it at the French this year - Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, Philipp Kohlschreiber, Marin Cilic, Gilles Simon.

Djokovic has faced all of those players at various times in the past 12 months - and if they're made to look less impressive (say, Tsonga and Nadal pulling out with third-round injuries rather than reaching the semis and quarters, respectively, as they did in 2015, or Murray being pushed to five sets by each of his first two opponents), then that makes Novak's performances against them in other events look less impressive in turn. (If a rising tide lifts all boats, then the tide was definitely falling at Roland Garros this year - which is at least slightly ironic, given how much it rained.)

While most prominent players suffered declines over the last two weeks, the affliction was not quite universal. Dominic Thiem took advantage of a fortuitous break in the draw to reach his first Grand Slam semifinal while only facing one seeded opponent to get there, and joins both Melog's and the ATP's top 10 for the first time. His quarterfinal foe, David Goffin, was also making his debut at that Slam stage, and also breaks new ground in both versions of the rankings (#11 in the ATP, #8 here). Roberto Bautista Agut was one of two players who took a set from Djokovic (Murray being the other), and did so after having dominated his first three matches rather thoroughly; he strikes me as someone who's just waiting for the right draw to reach his first quarter as well, and Melog seems to agree, pushing him back up to #11 after a recent tumble.

The biggest non-Novak story of the fortnight, however, was arguably Albert Ramos-Vinolas (listed simply as Albert Ramos above for database simplification reasons). Ramos had never before made it out of the second round of a Slam; this time, he reached his first ever round of 32, then upset Jack Sock, then upset Milos Raonic to reach the quarterfinals. His increase of 7 spots seems rather small, except for the fact that Melog already liked him pretty well (largely due to some very good clay Challenger results last year; until the French took place, I was about ready to write Ramos off as a miss for the Melog ratings).

Slight opposition-based decline or not, Djokovic's hold on the #1 spot is as firm as it's ever been, both in this system and the ATP rankings. Up next, we'll see the expanded-but-still-brief grass season, and we'll check in right before Wimbledon starts 3 weeks from now to see if anyone has gained any traction whatsoever in opposing him.