Melog Rankings: Early October 2016

There were no Grand Slams played in the last three weeks. Nor were there any Masters events, or any 500 point events. There is no Grand Slam in the immediate future, either. So based on the ESPN school of tennis watching, not much is going on at the moment.

On the other hand, the last three weeks have included the Davis Cup semifinals, in which Argentina defeated the defending champion British on the strength of Juan Martin del Potro upending Any Murray in five sets, and in which Marin Cilic and Croatia upset France. And after that,there were four 250-point events played, two in Europe and two in Asia - and three of the four were won by players claiming their first title, the oldest of whom is 22 - and two of those three titles were secured with victories over top-10 players in the final, including one upset of the recently-crowned US Open champion.

The lesson is the same as usual, really: There's always something going on in tennis.

	Player	Melog	Rank change (last update)	Melog change (last update)	Rank change (start of yr)	Melog change (start of yr)
1	Novak Djokovic	75.5	0	-2.3	0	-25.8
2	Andy Murray	60.2	0	-2.0	0	-5.6
3	Rafael Nadal	38.5	0	0.1	1	-1.7
4	Kei Nishikori	32.8	0	-1.5	4	1.3
5	Stanislas Wawrinka	29.3	0	1.5	2	-3.3
6	Roger Federer	26.4	0	-1.1	-3	-39.0
7	Gael Monfils	25.9	1	-0.5	10	10.8
8	Milos Raonic	23.9	-1	-2.8	2	5.0
9	Marin Cilic	22.6	0	0.4	13	10.6
10	Tomas Berdych	22.3	0	0.1	-5	-14.3
11	Dominic Thiem	18.7	0	-1.4	19	10.1
12	Roberto Bautista Agut	18.7	0	-1.2	-1	0.1
13	David Goffin	18.0	0	-1.4	6	3.8
14	Nick Kyrgios	16.4	0	-1.8	10	5.1
15	Richard Gasquet	15.3	3	1.5	-6	-10.3
16	Juan Martin Del Potro	14.0	4	1.5	88	12.8
17	David Ferrer	13.9	-1	-1.4	-11	-20.2
18	Jo Wilfried Tsonga	13.7	-3	-1.9	-5	-4.0
19	John Isner	12.9	-2	-1.1	-5	-3.9
20	Philipp Kohlschreiber	11.1	-1	-2.6	-4	-4.7
21	Grigor Dimitrov	10.7	2	0.4	0	-2.1
22	Jack Sock	10.6	-1	-1.4	-2	-2.8
23	Alexander Zverev	10.1	7	2.5	61	7.9
24	Pablo Cuevas	9.8	-2	-0.5	16	3.5
25	Steve Johnson	9.0	2	0.0	3	0.0
26	Andrey Kuznetsov	8.9	7	2.1	65	7.2
27	Gilles Simon	8.4	-1	-0.9	-12	-8.0
28	Fernando Verdasco	8.4	-4	-1.1	-1	-1.0
29	Gilles Muller	8.4	-1	-0.4	-4	-2.7
30	Bernard Tomic	7.8	-5	-1.6	-7	-3.5
31	Lucas Pouille	7.3	8	1.4	56	5.3
32	Marcos Baghdatis	7.0	-3	-0.7	9	1.0
33	Mikhail Youzhny	6.5	7	0.6	153	6.7
34	Pablo Carreno Busta	6.3	9	1.0	34	3.3
35	Ivo Karlovic	6.3	-3	-0.7	-17	-8.0
36	Albert Ramos	5.9	1	-0.4	0	-1.5
37	Guido Pella	5.9	-6	-1.5	21	2.2
38	Fabio Fognini	5.8	-2	-0.9	1	-0.8
39	John Millman	5.8	-4	-1.0	26	2.6
40	Sam Querrey	5.8	-2	-0.5	3	0.2
41	Kyle Edmund	5.6	0	-0.1	58	4.2
42	Feliciano Lopez	5.6	-8	-1.3	-10	-2.6
43	Carlos Berlocq	5.4	-1	0.0	28	2.5
44	Viktor Troicki	4.9	5	0.8	-10	-2.7
45	Yen Hsun Lu	4.9	0	0.4	10	0.9
46	Guido Andreozzi	4.6	1	0.4	93	4.4
47	Jeremy Chardy	4.0	4	0.0	-18	-4.8
48	Kevin Anderson	3.9	8	0.1	-36	-14.3
49	Nicolas Mahut	3.8	-3	-0.6	49	2.3
50	Jiri Vesely	3.8	8	0.1	-2	-1.0
51	Daniel Evans	3.7	-3	-0.5	56	2.6
52	Marcel Granollers	3.6	1	-0.2	49	2.3
53	Borna Coric	3.5	-9	-1.3	8	0.2
54	Federico Delbonis	3.4	-4	-0.7	2	-0.5
55	Taylor Harry Fritz	3.4	4	-0.2	17	0.5
56	Diego Sebastian Schwartzman	3.2	-1	-0.6	26	0.9
57	Paolo Lorenzi	3.0	-3	-0.8	18	0.3
58	Juan Monaco	3.0	7	0.0	-13	-2.2
59	Dudi Sela	2.8	7	-0.1	33	1.1
60	Nicolas Almagro	2.8	-3	-0.9	-6	-1.3
61	Thomaz Bellucci	2.7	12	0.4	-15	-2.5
62	Ivan Dodig	2.6	2	-0.4	-10	-1.7
63	Adrian Mannarino	2.5	-1	-0.8	-12	-1.9
64	Jan Lennard Struff	2.5	-12	-1.4	41	1.3
65	Radek Stepanek	2.4	-2	-0.6	54	1.8
66	Alexandr Dolgopolov	2.4	6	-0.1	-35	-6.2
67	Andreas Seppi	2.2	1	-0.4	-32	-5.2
68	Dustin Brown	2.2	7	-0.1	54	1.6
69	Leonardo Mayer	2.2	7	-0.1	-31	-4.5
70	Gastao Elias	2.2	-1	-0.5	76	2.1
71	Pierre Hugues Herbert	2.0	19	0.4	10	-0.3
72	Lukas Rosol	2.0	9	0.0	-13	-1.5
73	Illya Marchenko	1.9	-13	-1.5	6	-0.5
74	Mikhail Kukushkin	1.9	-4	-0.6	-7	-1.1
75	Stephane Robert	1.9	13	0.2	114	2.2

The movement at the top of the rankings is pretty small, and mostly easy to explain - Raonic took an early loss in St. Petersburg, Gasquet made the Shenzen final, Del Potro had the aforementioned upset win over Murray in Davis Cup, and Tsonga's Metz title from last year dropped out of the consideration set.

The big movers were outside the top 20 - but might not be for long. Alexander Zverev, having lost two finals earlier this year, made the title match in St. Petersburg by beating Tomas Berdych in the semis, and faced Stan Wawrinka in the final. Zverev took the first set, but Stan captured the second and went ahead 3-0 in the third - only for Zverev to rally, taking the set 7-5 and securing the first title of his career. Simultaneously, Lucas Pouille was grabbing his first title in a more straightforward final against Dominic Thiem. (Incidentally, Pouille has also never won a Challenger title; according to Tennis Abstract, he was the only member of the top 100 who had never won either a Challenger or ATP title until two weeks ago.) And finally, this week in Chengdu, Russian youngster Karen Khachanov defeated Albert Ramos in the final, claiming his maiden crown. (Khachanov still sits just outside the top 75; he's currently #79, 15 spots up from last time and 78 up from the beginning of the year.)

The game's top players resume their places on center stage this week in Beijing and Tokyo, and next week at the Shanghai Masters. In particular, Beijing is probably Novak Djokovic's favorite sub-Masters event, so he should... wait, he's missing Beijing? Leaving Murray as the top seed and presumptive favorite? Which could lead to a swing of several hundred ATP ranking points in a race for year-end #1 that Djokovic leads by a healthy but by no means fully secure margin?

Well that's certainly interesting. Stay tuned for the rest of the Asian swing, and we'll be back in two weeks to see if Murray has narrowed that gap any further - and to see if any members of the surging collection of young talent have continued their advances in the rankings.