Melog Rankings: Post-Australian Open 2017

At the end of last year, tennis appeared to be well on its way out of the Big Four era. Yes, Andy Murray and Novak Djokovic were still the top two players in the world (and with a wide gap between them and everyone else), but their counterparts in the group, Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer, had both struggled with various injuries throughout the year as age took its inevitable toll on them.

One month later, two of the members of the Big Four absorbed early, shocking upsets in Melbourne, while the other two faced off in the final of the season's first Grand Slam, with the winner overcoming a long-standing, well-known head-to-head disadvantage. If that description had been provided to anyone before the event began, it would have been expected that Murray had finally bested Djokovic and claimed his first Australian Open crown.

Instead, it was Federer and Nadal facing off in their first Grand Slam final in almost six years - a remarkable match that more than lived up to the hype (and easily justified my decision to wake up at 2:30 AM to watch it live). Federer's victory, rallying from a break deficit in the fifth set, gives him an 18th Grand Slam title. We'll cover the historical ramifications of said title when we update Grand Slam Scores in a later post, but for now, how does this affect his standing in the shorter-view Melog ratings?

	Player	Melog	Rank change (last update)	Melog change (last update)
1	Andy Murray	70.4	0	-4.8
2	Novak Djokovic	50.0	0	-11.4
3	Rafael Nadal	36.9	1	6.2
4	Kei Nishikori	35.3	-1	0.2
5	Milos Raonic	28.0	0	-2.6
6	Gael Monfils	25.1	0	-0.9
7	Marin Cilic	23.9	0	-1.3
8	Stanislas Wawrinka	23.3	0	-0.3
9	David Goffin	21.5	0	1.2
10	Juan Martin Del Potro	19.2	0	-0.3
11	Jo Wilfried Tsonga	18.8	4	1.6
12	Dominic Thiem	17.9	-1	-0.9
13	Nick Kyrgios	16.2	-1	-1.6
14	Roberto Bautista Agut	16.1	-1	-1.6
15	Grigor Dimitrov	15.7	5	3.6
16	Richard Gasquet	15.3	1	1.0
17	Roger Federer	15.0	-1	-1.6
18	Tomas Berdych	14.4	-4	-2.9
19	Alexander Zverev	14.0	-1	1.0
20	John Isner	11.5	-1	-1.2
21	Pablo Carreno Busta	11.4	1	1.3
22	Jack Sock	11.4	2	1.6
23	Philipp Kohlschreiber	10.9	2	1.2
24	Fernando Verdasco	10.0	5	1.1
25	Gilles Simon	9.6	-2	-0.4
26	David Ferrer	9.3	-5	-1.0
27	Gilles Muller	9.1	1	0.0
28	Pablo Cuevas	7.7	-2	-1.4
29	Steve Johnson	7.5	3	0.8
30	Diego Sebastian Schwartzman	6.9	4	0.9
31	Lucas Pouille	6.9	-1	-1.3
32	Andrey Kuznetsov	6.9	-5	-2.2
33	Marcos Baghdatis	6.6	0	0.2
34	Kyle Edmund	6.5	-3	-0.5
35	Mischa Zverev	6.5	15	2.2
36	Daniel Evans	6.5	22	3.0
37	Federico Delbonis	6.2	1	0.5
38	Ivo Karlovic	6.0	2	0.3
39	Sam Querrey	5.6	2	0.0
40	Yen Hsun Lu	5.5	-3	-0.4
41	Fabio Fognini	5.4	-6	-0.7
42	Albert Ramos	5.0	1	-0.3
43	Jan Lennard Struff	4.8	3	0.2
44	Viktor Troicki	4.6	-2	-0.7
45	Steve Darcis	4.5	10	0.9
46	John Millman	4.5	1	0.0
47	Marcel Granollers	4.4	-2	-0.6
48	Feliciano Lopez	4.3	-9	-1.5
49	Daniil Medvedev	4.2	12	1.1
50	Adrian Mannarino	4.1	6	0.5
51	Bernard Tomic	4.0	-15	-1.9
52	Nicolas Mahut	3.6	-3	-0.7
53	Borna Coric	3.5	1	-0.3
54	Carlos Berlocq	3.4	-6	-1.0
55	Jiri Vesely	3.2	2	-0.3
56	Dustin Brown	3.2	3	-0.1
57	Guido Andreozzi	3.1	-4	-0.8
58	Nicolas Almagro	3.1	7	0.3
59	Guido Pella	3.1	-8	-1.0
60	Juan Monaco	3.0	2	0.0
61	Kevin Anderson	2.9	3	0.0
62	Jordan Thompson	2.9	12	0.7
63	Jeremy Chardy	2.8	-11	-1.1
64	Hyeon Chung	2.8	31	1.5
65	Andreas Seppi	2.7	6	0.5
66	Radek Stepanek	2.7	-3	-0.3
67	Mikhail Youzhny	2.7	-23	-2.5
68	Dudi Sela	2.6	7	0.5
69	Ryan Harrison	2.6	14	0.9
70	Karen Khachanov	2.6	-1	0.1
71	Janko Tipsarevic	2.5	31	1.4
72	Martin Klizan	2.5	7	0.5
73	James Duckworth	2.5	-5	-0.2
74	Malek Jaziri	2.4	2	0.4
75	Alexandr Dolgopolov	2.3	-9	-0.4

Wait, Federer wins his first Grand Slam in four and a half years... and LOSES a spot in the rankings?

Not exactly. He actually drops that one spot based on the removal of last year's Brisbane event, and maintained his new position in the Australian Open. Which is... still crazy-sounding.

It's important to remember that Federer played very well in January of last year. He reached the final in Brisbane (including wins over Grigor Dimitrov and Dominic Thiem), then made the semis in Melbourne (with another victory over Dimitrov, followed by triumphs over David Goffin and Tomas Berdych). Yes, he did lose in both of those events, but both defeats (to Milos Raonic and Novak Djokovic) were to players who would end the year in the ATP's top 3, a ranking higher than any he encountered in his victorious run over the past fortnight.

Given any semblance of health over the coming months, Federer should rapidly progress up the ranking table even if he plays a relatively limited schedule. (Remember, he's played only 6 events in the last 12 months, and the Melog system regresses the performance ratings of players who are under 10.) For now, however, Melog is essentially saying, "Federer played really well in January last year, and really well in January this year; let's see how he does going forward."

So the biggest name of the last month has a shockingly stable Melog score - how about the players whose ratings have changed a little more?

Murray and Djokovic, having severely worsened their Australian performances from last year, are obvious casualties. They still hold a healthy margin above the rest of the field, but that margin is decidedly smaller than it once was - particularly in Djokovic's case. Given that Novak's best performances last year came in the first half of the season, if his level doesn't rebound soon, he could conceivably take a bit of a spill in this table.

Rafael Nadal, meanwhile, quickly reclaimed the #3 spot where he spent most of last year. Unlike Federer, Nadal's 2016 Australian Open did not go well; replacing a first-round upset loss with a run to the final results in an obvious jump in his Melog score, the largest seen by any player in the season's first month.

Joining Rafa in charging up the rankings is his vanquished foe in an outstanding semifinal match in the Australian. Grigor Dimitrov's season has gotten off to an exemplary start, as he claimed the title in Brisbane against a highly imposing field (Thiem, Raonic, and Nishikori in quarters, semis, and finals), then took advantage of Djokovic's early defeat to grab a spot in the aforementioned semifinal. (The result was not purely a result of Novak's absence; Dimitrov dismissed Richard Gasquet and Goffin in straight sets on the way there, then pushed Nadal to five and had break points midway through the fifth before succumbing.) Dimitrov has been hyped as a rising superstar from a young age, and if his early form this season can be maintained, he may be starting to reach that potential at long last.

Speaking of highly-touted young players who pushed Nadal to five sets, Alexander Zverev sees his rating improve somewhat this month as well (although Dimitrov leapfrogged him in the ordinal rankings). However, it's his much older brother Mischa who pulled an upset that, in most Slams, would have been the biggest of the tournament. After besting not only Murray, but also John Isner, the elder Zverev leaps 15 spots in the rankings. He's closely pursued by British youngster Dan Evans, who also upended a pair of seeds (Marin Cilic and Bernard Tomic) in a surprisingly deep run. Even further down the list, Hyeon Chung won his first round match in Melbourne before losing to Dimitrov, then turned around and swept through the Maui Challenger without dropping a set, returning in force to the top 75 after an injury-plagued 2016.

We'll see the stories of these and other players continue to take shape as 2017 moves into February, a month in which a great deal of tennis is played in small events (starting with one of the most lackluster Davis Cup opening rounds we've seen in some time). We'll be back at the end of the month to see where we stand leading into the season's first Masters events.