Melog Rankings: Post-Indian Wells 2017

So, this is later than I thought it would be. Through a combination of happenstance and procrastination, I failed to run fully updated rankings before Indian Wells started - and I would have put them up after the tournament began, except that the draw promised extensive madness and then delivered in spades, and it seemed like a good idea to let that play out.

Everyone knows the big story: Roger Federer sat out the last six months of 2016, then came back to start this year and has won the two biggest events played to date. Which is marvelous theater, of course, but it's accompanied by so many other things that I'm reluctant to discuss them in too much detail before we get to the numbers. So let's do that.

	Player	Melog	Rank change (last update)	Melog change (last update)	Rank change (start of yr)	Melog change (start of yr)
1	Andy Murray	70.7	0	0.3	0	-4.5
2	Novak Djokovic	44.4	0	-5.6	0	-17.0
3	Rafael Nadal	35.1	0	-1.8	1	4.4
4	Kei Nishikori	33.0	0	-2.2	-1	-2.0
5	Milos Raonic	27.3	0	-0.6	0	-3.3
6	Gael Monfils	23.1	0	-2.0	0	-2.9
7	Jo Wilfried Tsonga	21.3	4	2.5	8	4.1
8	Marin Cilic	21.1	-1	-2.8	-1	-4.1
9	Stanislas Wawrinka	21.1	-1	-2.2	-1	-2.5
10	David Goffin	20.5	-1	-1.0	-1	0.2
11	Roger Federer	19.5	6	4.5	5	2.8
12	Juan Martin Del Potro	19.2	-2	0.0	-2	-0.4
13	Grigor Dimitrov	18.8	2	3.0	7	6.7
14	Dominic Thiem	17.9	-2	0.0	-3	-0.9
15	Nick Kyrgios	17.2	-2	1.0	-3	-0.6
16	Richard Gasquet	17.0	0	1.7	1	2.7
17	Roberto Bautista Agut	16.6	-3	0.5	-4	-1.0
18	Alexander Zverev	14.0	1	0.1	0	1.1
19	Jack Sock	13.3	3	1.9	5	3.6
20	Tomas Berdych	12.9	-2	-1.5	-6	-4.4
21	Fernando Verdasco	11.6	3	1.6	8	2.7
22	Pablo Carreno Busta	11.0	-1	-0.4	0	0.9
23	John Isner	9.6	-3	-2.0	-4	-3.2
24	Gilles Simon	9.6	1	0.0	-1	-0.5
25	Lucas Pouille	9.1	6	2.2	5	0.9
26	Steve Johnson	8.2	3	0.8	6	1.6
27	Philipp Kohlschreiber	8.1	-4	-2.7	-2	-1.5
28	Gilles Muller	8.0	-1	-1.0	0	-1.0
29	David Ferrer	7.7	-3	-1.6	-8	-2.6
30	Diego Sebastian Schwartzman	7.6	0	0.6	4	1.5
31	Daniel Evans	7.0	5	0.5	27	3.5
32	Sam Querrey	6.4	7	0.8	9	0.8
33	Kyle Edmund	6.2	1	-0.3	-2	-0.8
34	Albert Ramos	5.8	8	0.7	9	0.5
35	Ryan Harrison	5.7	34	3.0	48	3.9
36	Mischa Zverev	5.5	-1	-0.9	14	1.3
37	Steve Darcis	5.2	8	0.7	18	1.6
38	Pablo Cuevas	5.2	-10	-2.4	-12	-3.9
39	Ivo Karlovic	5.2	-1	-0.8	1	-0.5
40	Yen Hsun Lu	5.0	0	-0.5	-3	-0.9
41	Daniil Medvedev	4.5	8	0.3	20	1.5
42	John Millman	4.5	4	0.0	5	0.0
43	Marcos Baghdatis	4.4	-10	-2.2	-10	-2.0
44	Jan Lennard Struff	4.1	-1	-0.7	2	-0.5
45	Fabio Fognini	4.0	-4	-1.4	-10	-2.0
46	Federico Delbonis	4.0	-9	-2.2	-8	-1.8
47	Carlos Berlocq	4.0	7	0.6	1	-0.4
48	Andrey Kuznetsov	3.7	-16	-3.2	-21	-5.4
49	Viktor Troicki	3.6	-5	-1.0	-7	-1.7
50	Jeremy Chardy	3.5	13	0.7	2	-0.4
51	Karen Khachanov	3.5	19	0.9	18	1.0
52	Adrian Mannarino	3.4	-2	-0.7	4	-0.3
53	Kevin Anderson	3.3	8	0.4	11	0.5
54	Hyeon Chung	3.2	10	0.4	41	1.9
55	Borna Coric	3.2	-2	-0.3	-1	-0.6
56	Nicolas Mahut	3.0	-4	-0.6	-7	-1.2
57	Alexandr Dolgopolov	2.8	18	0.5	9	0.1
58	Bernard Tomic	2.8	-7	-1.2	-22	-3.1
59	Radek Stepanek	2.6	7	-0.1	4	-0.3
60	Dudi Sela	2.6	8	-0.1	15	0.5
61	Damir Dzumhur	2.6	29	1.2	17	0.6
62	Yoshihito Nishioka	2.5	25	1.0	30	1.0
63	Malek Jaziri	2.5	11	0.0	13	0.4
64	Jordan Thompson	2.5	-2	-0.4	10	0.3
65	Juan Monaco	2.4	-5	-0.5	-3	-0.6
66	Feliciano Lopez	2.4	-18	-1.9	-27	-3.4
67	Janko Tipsarevic	2.3	4	-0.2	35	1.2
68	James Duckworth	2.2	5	-0.2	0	-0.4
69	Jiri Vesely	2.2	-14	-1.0	-12	-1.3
70	Marcel Granollers	2.2	-23	-2.2	-25	-2.8
71	Mikhail Youzhny	2.2	-4	-0.5	-27	-3.0
72	Dustin Brown	2.1	-16	-1.2	-13	-1.2
73	Nicolas Almagro	2.1	-15	-1.0	-8	-0.7
74	Donald Young	2.1	15	0.6	11	0.3
75	Denis Istomin	2.0	3	0.0	31	1.0

Federer was great again in Indian Wells, not dropping a set and not even having his serve broken until the final. There was some luck working in his favor - a walkover in the quarterfinals and the #17 seed reaching the semis - but Melog accounts for all of that and still boosts him six spots, placing him back on the cusp of the top 10 despite the fact that he's only played 8 events in the last 12 months (and just absorbed a loss to Evgeny Donskoy in Dubai, an event that he's won half a dozen times in the past). If Federer keeps playing like this, his ranking will climb quickly; it's just a matter of actually keeping his 35-year-old body producing this level of play. (Which will be no small feat if he pulls it off.)

If not for Roger's early resurgence, the dominant story of the first three months of the season would be the disappearance of Novak Djokovic. The four-time ATP year-end #1 looked like an unstoppable force at the end of last year's French Open, having won four consecutive Slams and holding an apparently iron grip on the #1 ranking. Since then, he's won just two titles in nine months, absorbed early-round losses in two out of three Slams, and relinquished the top spot in both Melog and the ATP rankings so thoroughly that he's got a better chance of falling to third (or lower) than he does of reclaiming the catbird seat over the next few months. I'm not willing to start digging Novak's grave just yet; there's still plenty of time left this year for him to turn it around. But for the first time in over half a decade, Djokovic has slipped far enough that a turnaround is genuinely necessary.

Lower down the rankings... well, a lot of things can happen in seven weeks, which is how long it's been since the last update. Grigor Dimitrov continued his strong start. Alexander Zverev snapped up a title, as did Jack Sock (walkovers in the final still count!). And yet none of their advances are quite as surprising as that of Ryan Harrison, the perennial prospect who emerged from a chaotic Memphis draw with his first tour-level trophy. Harrison triumphed without loss of a set in Memphis, just a couple weeks after doing the same thing in a good Challenger draw in Dallas, and he leads a group of players who catapulted up through the middle and bottom sections of the top 100 in February. Youngsters Karen Khachanov, Hyeon Chung, and Yoshihito Nishioka (who nearly upended eventual finalist Stan Wawrinka in Indian Wells) join Harrison in securing double-digit ranking increases since our last check in, adding to the ever-increasing presence of the rising generation in the echelon of solid players.

That brings us to Miami, the season's second Masters event, which started yesterday, and in which neither of the world's top two players are participating. That makes it yet another first-half title from 2016 that Djokovic will fail to defend - and also makes the path far easier for Federer, or Nadal, or any of the other regular contenders who've lost so many finals to the Big Four over the past half decade, or any of the rising stars hoping to seize their first big title.

We'll be back some time soon to see if Federer has continued his absurd redominance, or if one of the top two has reasserted himself after resting his injured right elbow... or if the sport has just descended into utter madness.