Melog Rankings: Post-Finals 2016

One of the things I like most about tennis is the way it rewards long-haul performance. So many other sports seem to be all about the playoffs; you can win 116 games in a baseball season (like the 2001 Mariners), or 73 games in a basketball season (like last year's Warriors), and still have people scoff at you if you get upended in a short playoff series (or, like the 18-1 2007 Patriots, one game of football).

Tennis is different. While it has its own version of the playoffs, taking the top 8 players of the year and matching them up with each other in the World Tour Finals, it does not automatically designate the winner of that event to be the champion of the year. Instead, the World Number One is the player who performed best through the grind of the ten-month tennis season.

That designation is often secured very early - in 2015, for instance, Novak Djokovic clinched the top spot by winning the US Open in early September. Through the first half of the 2016 season, it looked like we'd have another blowout, as Djokovic won the first two Slams of the year, and three of the first five Masters. After he wrapped up the French Open title (completing the career Slam, and making him the first player in nearly 50 years to hold all four Slams at once), his lead in the 2016 points race was over 3000.

And after that... well, after that, Andy Murray had the run of his life, winning seven titles from nine events stretching from Queen's Club to Paris. Djokovic won only one title in that span, and entering the World Finals, Murray held the #1 spot by a margin of just over 400 points - a gap that could easily be closed using the points available in the Finals.

The event played out perfectly, as Djokovic and Murray both swept their round robin groups and won their semifinal matches, bringing up a first in tennis history: the last match of the Tour Finals would result in the year-end #1 ranking being awarded to the winner, whichever player that was.

Murray won the match, and the title, and the year-end #1 ranking. And given how the Melog ratings have looked during the last couple of updates, the top of the upcoming table should come as little surprise...

	Player	Melog	Rank change (last update)	Melog change (last update)	Rank change (start of yr)	Melog change (start of yr)
1	Andy Murray	76.8	0	4.8	1	11.0
2	Novak Djokovic	60.9	0	-2.6	-1	-40.5
3	Kei Nishikori	34.7	1	1.1	5	3.2
4	Rafael Nadal	30.4	-1	-4.2	0	-9.9
5	Milos Raonic	30.3	2	5.0	5	11.4
6	Gael Monfils	25.8	0	-0.2	11	10.7
7	Marin Cilic	24.2	2	2.2	15	12.1
8	Stanislas Wawrinka	23.4	-3	-3.3	-1	-9.2
9	David Goffin	20.8	1	-0.5	10	6.7
10	Dominic Thiem	18.7	1	-1.0	20	10.0
11	Juan Martin Del Potro	17.9	1	0.0	93	16.8
12	Nick Kyrgios	17.6	2	0.1	12	6.3
13	Roberto Bautista Agut	17.4	2	0.1	-2	-1.2
14	Tomas Berdych	17.1	-1	-0.6	-9	-19.4
15	Jo Wilfried Tsonga	17.0	1	0.2	-2	-0.8
16	Roger Federer	16.6	-8	-5.6	-13	-48.9
17	Richard Gasquet	14.2	0	-1.6	-8	-11.4
18	Alexander Zverev	12.8	0	-0.3	66	10.7
19	John Isner	12.6	2	1.7	-5	-4.2
20	Grigor Dimitrov	11.9	-1	-0.6	1	-0.8
21	David Ferrer	10.1	-1	-2.0	-15	-24.0
22	Pablo Carreno Busta	9.9	2	0.8	46	6.9
23	Gilles Simon	9.9	0	0.0	-8	-6.5
24	Jack Sock	9.6	7	2.1	-4	-3.8
25	Philipp Kohlschreiber	9.6	-3	-0.5	-9	-6.2
26	Andrey Kuznetsov	8.9	-1	0.0	65	7.2
27	Pablo Cuevas	8.9	1	0.8	13	2.5
28	Gilles Muller	8.9	-1	0.5	-3	-2.2
29	Fernando Verdasco	8.8	0	0.9	-2	-0.5
30	Lucas Pouille	8.1	-4	-0.5	57	6.1
31	Kyle Edmund	6.8	-1	-1.0	68	5.4
32	Steve Johnson	6.6	0	0.2	-4	-2.4
33	Marcos Baghdatis	6.2	3	0.2	8	0.2
34	Diego Sebastian Schwartzman	6.0	21	2.3	48	3.7
35	Fabio Fognini	5.8	3	-0.1	4	-0.8
36	Bernard Tomic	5.8	-3	-0.3	-13	-5.5
37	Yen Hsun Lu	5.8	3	0.2	18	1.8
38	Feliciano Lopez	5.7	4	0.2	-6	-2.4
39	Ivo Karlovic	5.7	4	0.2	-21	-8.6
40	Sam Querrey	5.5	1	-0.1	3	0.0
41	Viktor Troicki	5.3	-7	-0.9	-7	-2.3
42	Mikhail Youzhny	5.2	-7	-0.9	144	5.4
43	Albert Ramos	5.2	2	0.2	-7	-2.2
44	Marcel Granollers	5.0	2	0.1	57	3.7
45	Federico Delbonis	4.7	2	0.3	11	0.8
46	Guido Pella	4.6	-9	-1.3	12	1.0
47	Jan Lennard Struff	4.5	6	0.6	58	3.4
48	John Millman	4.4	-4	-1.0	17	1.2
49	Carlos Berlocq	4.3	-10	-1.4	22	1.4
50	Mischa Zverev	4.2	1	0.0	46	2.5
51	Nicolas Mahut	4.1	3	0.3	47	2.6
52	Jeremy Chardy	3.8	-2	-0.4	-23	-5.0
53	Guido Andreozzi	3.7	-5	-0.5	86	3.5
54	Borna Coric	3.7	-2	-0.2	7	0.4
55	Steve Darcis	3.6	12	1.0	51	2.4
56	Adrian Mannarino	3.5	0	0.0	-5	-0.9
57	Jiri Vesely	3.5	0	0.1	-9	-1.3
58	Daniel Evans	3.4	-9	-0.8	49	2.3
59	Daniil Medvedev	3.0	2	0.0	346	4.2
60	Radek Stepanek	3.0	0	-0.1	59	2.3
61	Juan Monaco	3.0	1	0.0	-16	-2.2
62	Dustin Brown	2.9	6	0.4	60	2.3
63	Kevin Anderson	2.8	-5	-0.5	-51	-15.4
64	Nicolas Almagro	2.8	-5	-0.6	-10	-1.3
65	Alexandr Dolgopolov	2.7	0	0.0	-34	-6.0
66	Paolo Lorenzi	2.6	-3	-0.3	9	-0.1
67	Thomaz Bellucci	2.6	-3	-0.2	-21	-2.6
68	Karen Khachanov	2.4	-2	-0.3	89	2.4
69	James Duckworth	2.2	57	1.7	138	2.6
70	Facundo Bagnis	2.2	2	0.1	64	1.9
71	Andreas Seppi	2.1	-2	-0.3	-36	-5.4
72	Rogerio Dutra Silva	2.1	3	0.2	75	2.0
73	Dudi Sela	2.1	6	0.2	19	0.3
74	Santiago Giraldo	2.1	0	0.1	38	1.1
75	Pierre Hugues Herbert	2.0	-2	0.0	6	-0.4

Murray's preexisting lead over Djokovic in the Melog ratings nearly doubles in size with his victories in Paris and the World Finals in the books. It's easily a wide enough margin that even the disappearance of his two victories in last year's Davis Cup final won't put Novak very close to him. And looking ahead to next year... well, remember how Djokovic stampeded through the first half of 2016? He's defending all of those points in the early going next year, while Murray's results from the first three months of 2016 comprised reaching the final of the Australian Open and... essentially nothing else. So if he has any success at all in the early going next year, Murray could be #1 for a while.

But if the second half of 2016 has taught us anything about tennis, it's that nothing should be taken for granted. The biggest story of the year outside of the top 2 has been the rise of some promising young talent, with Dominic Thiem making his top 10 debut, and Alexander Zverev and Nick Kyrgios (if his head ever gets screwed on straight) nipping at his heels.

There were also several players older than that group but younger than Murray and Djokovic who reached new heights this year; Kei Nishikori sits at #3 in the Melog ratings for the first time, while Milos Raonic makes his debut in the same position in the ATP Rankings. When healthy, both of those men have shown the capability of threatening even the best players on tour (the two of them combined to play three very close matches against Djokovic and Murray at the Finals this week). And let's not forget Juan Martin del Potro, who's played like he belongs in the top 10 for the last several months, and who may well make a run at resuming that position next year.

But that can all wait. For now, it's time to celebrate Andy Murray, who joins the Chicago Cubs and the city of Cleveland on the list of sports entities that reached the top of their respective competitive fields in 2016 after lengthy waits.