Melog rankings: Post-Wimbledon 2016

Well THAT was interesting.

It's not necessarily an earth-shaking shock to see Novak Djokovic lose; it was always going to happen eventually, and grass is a surface that's prone to creating upsets, because it's harder to break serve. So in the abstract, losing a four-set match (including two tiebreaks) to a server of Sam Querrey's quality isn't the most appalling thing that could happen to a tennis player; Querrey isn't even the lowest-ranked player Novak has lost to this year. But given that Djokovic hadn't lost a Grand Slam match in 13 months... it's still rather startling.

The loss drives home two points. First, it is REALLY DIFFICULT to do what Djokovic did in capturing four consecutive Slams; you have one bad day against the wrong person, and it's over. And second, nobody is unbeatable - either in the matches themselves or in the rankings. (Don't look now, but Novak's lead on Andy Murray in the ATP's Race to London - which counts 2016 points only - is suddenly less than 1000 points, a very manageable deficit. A strong finish to the year could get Murray to the ATP #1 spot for the first time.)

So let's see what the turmoil of Wimbledon (or at least relative turmoil - the world #2 still won the title, after all) does to Melog's opinion of the world's best tennis players.

	Player	Melog	Rank change (last update)	Melog change (last update)	Rank change (start of yr)	Melog change (start of yr)
1	Novak Djokovic	84.7	0	-8.5	0	-16.6
2	Andy Murray	60.4	0	5.4	0	-5.4
3	Roger Federer	43.4	0	-4.9	0	-22.0
4	Rafael Nadal	38.5	0	0.3	0	-1.7
5	Kei Nishikori	27.9	0	0.5	3	-3.6
6	Milos Raonic	25.6	6	5.6	4	6.7
7	David Goffin	24.0	1	0.9	12	9.8
8	Tomas Berdych	23.8	2	2.6	-3	-12.7
9	Dominic Thiem	23.4	-2	0.3	21	14.8
10	Stanislas Wawrinka	21.5	-4	-2.8	-3	-11.1
11	Jo Wilfried Tsonga	20.7	2	1.9	2	2.9
12	Roberto Bautista Agut	19.9	-1	-0.6	-1	1.4
13	Richard Gasquet	19.4	-4	-2.7	-4	-6.1
14	Marin Cilic	18.9	2	1.9	8	6.9
15	Philipp Kohlschreiber	18.0	-1	-0.5	1	2.2
16	Nick Kyrgios	16.4	-1	-1.0	8	5.1
17	David Ferrer	16.0	1	0.6	-11	-18.2
18	John Isner	15.5	1	0.9	-4	-1.3
19	Gael Monfils	13.6	-2	-2.1	-2	-1.5
20	Jack Sock	11.1	2	2.0	0	-2.3
21	Grigor Dimitrov	9.5	0	-0.3	0	-3.2
22	Gilles Simon	9.4	-2	-2.7	-7	-7.0
23	Pablo Cuevas	9.3	2	0.9	17	3.0
24	Steve Johnson	9.3	7	1.7	4	0.3
25	Feliciano Lopez	9.2	1	0.8	7	1.0
26	Bernard Tomic	9.1	4	1.4	-3	-2.2
27	Alexander Zverev	8.9	7	2.0	57	6.7
28	Albert Ramos	8.3	0	0.4	8	0.9
29	Fernando Verdasco	7.9	-6	-0.9	-2	-1.4
30	Fabio Fognini	7.9	-1	0.1	9	1.2
31	Gilles Muller	7.8	-7	-0.8	-6	-3.3
32	Guido Pella	7.7	1	0.4	26	4.1
33	Andrey Kuznetsov	7.5	3	1.2	58	5.7
34	Kevin Anderson	6.8	-7	-1.4	-22	-11.4
35	Jeremy Chardy	6.6	3	0.7	-6	-2.1
36	Marcos Baghdatis	6.3	-1	-0.4	5	0.2
37	John Millman	6.1	0	0.2	28	2.9
38	Juan Martin Del Potro	5.9	8	1.4	66	4.8
39	Ivo Karlovic	5.8	-7	-1.6	-21	-8.5
40	Sam Querrey	5.7	19	2.4	3	0.2
41	Carlos Berlocq	5.6	-1	0.2	30	2.7
42	Borna Coric	5.5	1	0.4	19	2.1
43	Mikhail Kukushkin	5.3	-1	0.3	24	2.3
44	Alexandr Dolgopolov	5.1	-5	-0.8	-13	-3.5
45	Kyle Edmund	5.0	0	0.2	54	3.6
46	Lucas Pouille	4.9	17	1.8	41	3.0
47	Nicolas Almagro	4.8	-3	0.1	7	0.7
48	Jiri Vesely	4.7	14	1.6	0	-0.1
49	Pablo Carreno Busta	4.6	-1	0.2	19	1.6
50	Joao Sousa	4.6	-9	-0.5	-8	-1.0
51	Federico Delbonis	4.4	-4	-0.1	5	0.5
52	Adrian Mannarino	4.4	0	0.4	-1	0.0
53	Denis Istomin	4.2	14	1.3	0	0.1
54	Benoit Paire	4.1	-4	-0.2	-7	-1.1
55	Marcel Granollers	3.9	0	0.5	46	2.6
56	Viktor Troicki	3.9	-3	0.2	-22	-3.7
57	Ivan Dodig	3.8	-3	0.3	-5	-0.4
58	Andreas Seppi	3.8	-7	-0.4	-23	-3.7
59	Juan Monaco	3.8	-10	-0.6	-14	-1.4
60	Thomaz Bellucci	3.8	4	0.8	-14	-1.4
61	Pierre Hugues Herbert	3.7	4	0.8	20	1.4
62	Mikhail Youzhny	3.6	-2	0.5	124	3.9
63	Martin Klizan	3.3	-7	-0.1	14	0.6
64	Yen Hsun Lu	3.1	4	0.3	-9	-0.9
65	Guillermo Garcia Lopez	3.1	-8	-0.3	-39	-6.4
66	Guido Andreozzi	3.0	0	0.1	73	2.8
67	Nicolas Mahut	2.9	21	1.0	31	1.4
68	Damir Dzumhur	2.8	2	0.0	26	1.1
69	Hyeon Chung	2.6	4	-0.1	-36	-5.5
70	Taylor Harry Fritz	2.5	6	0.1	2	-0.3
71	Paolo Lorenzi	2.4	3	-0.1	4	-0.3
72	Dudi Sela	2.4	-3	-0.4	20	0.7
73	Leonardo Mayer	2.4	-15	-0.8	-35	-4.3
74	Paul Henri Mathieu	2.4	-3	-0.3	11	0.4
75	Lukas Rosol	2.3	0	-0.2	-16	-1.1

So, there are two basic sections of the rankings right now.

First, there is the top 2. Djokovic has held a colossal lead in these ratings all year. Suddenly, after his early exit and Murray's Wimbledon title, his lead is merely large. And much of that lead is based in last year's performance, as Djokovic won five post-Wimbledon titles in 2015 (including the US Open, the World Finals, and two Masters events) to Murray's one (also a Masters).

Those 2015 achievements should still factor into our assessment of Djokovic and Murray as players, of course; Novak is more than capable of running off a similar string of dominance in the second half of 2016 (which will also include the clay court Rio Olympics - I'll be counting those here; the ATP will not). But as mentioned above, Murray has a chance at the top spot if he finishes strong.

Second, there is... everything else. For what I hope are obvious reasons, the most noteworthy member of the "everything else" brigade this week is Milos Raonic, who just reached the first Grand Slam final of his career, beating Roger Federer on the way. As a result, his rating jumps just as much as Murray's, and he climbs an immediate six spots in the rankings. Out of all of the players who began the year outside the top 8, he's the first to break into the top 6. (Which is a weird distinction, but that top 6 hung together for a long time.)

It's also worth pointing out that (again, according to the ATP, as I don't have 2016-only ratings available) Raonic has the third-most points so far this year; he's far behind Murray's #2 total, but also holds a pretty good lead on the rest of the field. Raonic's second half was very weak last year, which is suppressing his rating at the moment, but he's got a real opportunity to break some new ground as the season progresses.

On the flip side, David Ferrer no longer holds the title of player whose Melog rating has fallen furthest during the 2016 season. Roger Federer made the semifinals at Wimbledon this year - but he made the final last year, losing a four-set match to Djokovic, and his run to that stage included a straight-set win over Murray. This year, his draw in the early rounds was quite straightforward; he narrowly escaped the quarterfinals against Marin Cilic (saving three match points), and then lost to Raonic in five in the semis. Given the performances he'll be defending for the rest of the year (Cincinnati title, US Open final, Basel title, final at the World Finals), he's in significant danger of tumbling from the top 4 by the end of the year, and possibly farther. (Among other considerations, Federer hasn't won a title yet in 2016, and hasn't reached a final since the first week of the year.)

There's plenty of movement lower in the rankings this week as well - Sam Querrey, Lucas Pouille, and Jiri Vesely all jumped by over 10 spots after their excellent Wimbledon performances, and Juan Martin del Potro cemented his comeback status by upsetting Stan Wawrinka and rejoining the top 40 (despite only having played in 8 events in the last year). And that degree of sub-top-20 movement is likely to continue for the next month - which is good, because there won't be much happening at the top of the rankings in July.

The tennis schedule is typically something of a catastrophe in Olympic years, and 2016 is no exception. Most years, there's only one event the week after Wimbledon; this time, there are three, including a 500-pointer in Hamburg. Between the compression of the schedule (the post-Wimbledon clay swing through Europe is being played in two weeks instead of four) and the fact that most top players will be resting for the Olympics themselves, the fields in most of the tournaments this month will be extremely diluted. (The 500-pointer in Hamburg this week has a field that looks more like what you'd expect from a weak 250-point event; the 250 in Newport looks more like a strong Challenger, as several players outside the ATP's top 140 were granted direct entry there.)

What that means is that the players who succeed in those tournaments will be earning ATP ranking points that won't necessarily be supported by the strength of the opposition they're facing. Which is something that Melog will be taking into account in our next update, three weeks from now (and after the Canada Masters, which has also been shifted around the schedule to accommodate Rio, and which may well also see some top players skip it for Olympic prep.)