Melog Rankings: Pre-Paris 2016

Here we go.

Andy Murray won the 500-point title in Vienna last week, further narrowing the gap between himself and Novak Djokovic. Novak still leads by nearly 2000 points in this week's ATP rankings, but there's a caveat to that: he's the defending champion at both the Paris Masters and the World Finals, and because of a quirk in the ATP rankings (the previous year's Finals are removed a week before the next year's take place, which is a week earlier than any other event), Murray could leapfrog him in the rankings as early as this week and grab #1 for the first time in his career.

There's action down the line as well, particularly from last week's other titlist, as Marin Cilic grabs the Basel crown and climbs into the ninth spot in the 2016-only rankings, which will determine entry into the World Finals. (The player occupying the #9 spot will qualify for the eight-man field because Rafael Nadal, who's in the top 8, has shut down for the year due to injury.)

And there's a strong argument to be made that neither of those things was the coolest event of the last fortnight. The week before last in Stockholm, Juan Martin del Potro secured his first title since January 2014, further cementing his comeback after years of health problems.

With all of that in the books, let's get to the numbers!

	Player	Melog	Rank change (last update)	Melog change (last update)	Rank change (start of yr)	Melog change (start of yr)
1	Andy Murray	71.9	0	4.2	1	6.1
2	Novak Djokovic	63.5	0	-0.3	-1	-37.9
3	Rafael Nadal	34.6	0	-1.1	1	-5.7
4	Kei Nishikori	33.7	0	1.8	4	2.1
5	Stanislas Wawrinka	26.6	1	-0.8	2	-6.0
6	Gael Monfils	26.0	-1	-1.5	11	10.9
7	Milos Raonic	25.3	1	-0.5	3	6.4
8	Roger Federer	22.2	-1	-4.3	-5	-43.2
9	Marin Cilic	22.0	0	-0.3	13	9.9
10	David Goffin	21.3	1	0.4	9	7.2
11	Dominic Thiem	19.7	2	1.0	19	11.1
12	Juan Martin Del Potro	17.9	5	3.9	92	16.8
13	Tomas Berdych	17.8	-3	-3.3	-8	-18.7
14	Nick Kyrgios	17.5	0	0.5	10	6.2
15	Roberto Bautista Agut	17.2	-3	-3.2	-4	-1.3
16	Jo Wilfried Tsonga	16.8	2	2.9	-3	-1.0
17	Richard Gasquet	15.8	-2	0.3	-8	-9.8
18	Alexander Zverev	13.2	2	0.8	66	11.0
19	Grigor Dimitrov	12.5	0	-0.6	2	-0.2
20	David Ferrer	12.1	-4	-1.9	-14	-22.0
21	John Isner	10.8	0	0.4	-7	-6.0
22	Philipp Kohlschreiber	10.1	0	-0.2	-6	-5.7
23	Gilles Simon	9.9	1	0.1	-8	-6.5
24	Pablo Carreno Busta	9.1	7	1.5	44	6.1
25	Andrey Kuznetsov	8.9	0	-0.3	66	7.1
26	Lucas Pouille	8.6	3	0.1	61	6.6
27	Gilles Muller	8.4	3	0.4	-2	-2.7
28	Pablo Cuevas	8.1	-1	-0.7	12	1.8
29	Fernando Verdasco	7.9	-3	-1.0	-2	-1.5
30	Kyle Edmund	7.8	3	1.1	69	6.4
31	Jack Sock	7.6	-8	-2.3	-11	-5.8
32	Steve Johnson	6.4	-4	-2.5	-4	-2.6
33	Bernard Tomic	6.1	2	0.2	-10	-5.2
34	Viktor Troicki	6.1	6	0.9	0	-1.5
35	Mikhail Youzhny	6.1	-1	-0.2	151	6.3
36	Marcos Baghdatis	6.0	-4	-0.7	5	0.0
37	Guido Pella	6.0	2	0.6	21	2.4
38	Fabio Fognini	5.9	6	1.2	1	-0.7
39	Carlos Berlocq	5.7	-2	0.1	32	2.8
40	Yen Hsun Lu	5.6	6	1.4	15	1.6
41	Sam Querrey	5.6	-3	0.0	2	0.1
42	Feliciano Lopez	5.5	0	0.4	-10	-2.6
43	Ivo Karlovic	5.5	-7	-0.3	-25	-8.8
44	John Millman	5.4	-3	0.3	21	2.2
45	Albert Ramos	5.0	-2	0.2	-9	-2.4
46	Marcel Granollers	4.9	-1	0.6	55	3.6
47	Federico Delbonis	4.4	3	0.7	9	0.5
48	Guido Andreozzi	4.3	3	0.6	91	4.1
49	Daniel Evans	4.2	0	0.4	58	3.1
50	Jeremy Chardy	4.1	-3	0.3	-21	-4.6
51	Mischa Zverev	4.1	11	1.5	45	2.5
52	Borna Coric	3.9	1	0.3	9	0.6
53	Jan Lennard Struff	3.9	7	1.0	52	2.7
54	Nicolas Mahut	3.8	-6	0.0	44	2.4
55	Diego Sebastian Schwartzman	3.6	6	1.0	27	1.3
56	Adrian Mannarino	3.5	-2	0.2	-5	-1.0
57	Jiri Vesely	3.4	-5	-0.3	-9	-1.4
58	Kevin Anderson	3.4	-3	0.2	-46	-14.8
59	Nicolas Almagro	3.4	-3	0.2	-5	-0.8
60	Radek Stepanek	3.1	-2	0.2	59	2.4
61	Daniil Medvedev	3.0	19	1.3	344	4.2
62	Juan Monaco	3.0	-5	0.0	-17	-2.2
63	Paolo Lorenzi	2.9	-4	0.0	12	0.2
64	Thomaz Bellucci	2.8	-1	0.1	-18	-2.4
65	Alexandr Dolgopolov	2.7	-1	0.3	-34	-5.9
66	Karen Khachanov	2.7	7	0.6	91	2.7
67	Steve Darcis	2.5	2	0.4	39	1.4
68	Dustin Brown	2.5	7	0.5	54	1.9
69	Andreas Seppi	2.4	-4	0.0	-34	-5.1
70	Stephane Robert	2.3	12	0.6	119	2.6
71	Leonardo Mayer	2.1	-5	-0.2	-33	-4.6
72	Facundo Bagnis	2.0	14	0.4	62	1.7
73	Pierre Hugues Herbert	2.0	-3	-0.1	8	-0.4
74	Santiago Giraldo	2.0	10	0.3	38	1.0
75	Rogerio Dutra Silva	1.9	16	0.5	72	1.9

First things first: The Vienna title solidifies Murray's lead on Novak in the Melog ratings - to such an extent that it will probably take a noteworthy collapse for Djokovic to pass him. (Remember, Novak had great results the last two weeks of last year, with a match record of 7-1 against top-8 competition across Paris and the Finals. By comparison, Murray also reached the Paris finals through a solid draw, but Djokovic handled him easily in that match, and he posted a meek 1-2 in the round robin of the Finals.) Murray has more room to improve on last year's results, and their respective recent forms would seem to play in his favor as well.

Further down the rankings... yes, that IS Juan Martin del Potro at #12, passing (among others) Tomas Berdych. And yes, that IS teenager Alexander Zverev at #18, as he gets his Melog ranking below his age. Former clay court specialist Pablo Carreno Busta also takes a jump, securing his second hard court title of the year and moving up to #24.

On the downside, the removal of last year's Basel results means that Roger Federer does not currently hold a title. His inevitable slide therefore continues, and since he made the finals at the Finals last year (and scored a win over Djokovic in the round robin), his tumble is not yet complete.

One more thing, much further down the rankings: Check out Daniil Medvedev, who joins the list at #61 this week (ahead of such tour stalwarts as Alexandr Dolgopolov and Juan Monaco), and lapping the field by having climbed 344 spots since the beginning of the year.

Who is Daniil Medvedev? He's a 20-year-old Russian who was ranked outside the top 300 in January (by both the ATP and Melog), but has climbed steadily, posting a 64-25 match record across all levels of competition. That breaks down to: 9-3 in Futures, 30-13 in Challengers, 8-1 in qualifying for Challengers, 5-5 on the ATP World Tour, and 12-3 in ATP qualifying. (The Futures and qualifying results aren't counted in the Melog table, but if they were, they probably wouldn't hurt.) Medvedev is not particularly high on most people's prospect radars, as far as I know - but maybe he should be. (The preferred Russian prospect is generally held to be Andrey Rublev, who's a year younger but has gone a tepid 33-31 in 2016, including a loss to Medvedev in straight sets in last week's Budapest Challenger.)

But Medvedev, along with nearly all other prospects, can wait. For now, the focus is (justifiably) on Paris and London. And we'll be back in two weeks (or a little more) to break down what happens - including the growing possibility that the ATP's decision to ignore the Olympics ends up deciding their #1 spot for the year.