Melog Ratings: Post-Australian Open 2016

Well, the tennis season is off to its traditional start, as Novak Djokovic has beaten Andy Murray in the Australian Open final.

All right, so that's not technically a tradition, even if it has happened four times in the last six years (not counting the time it happened in the semis instead of the final). But since it happened last year as well, it probably won't have changed much in the ratings. So let's see what has changed.

Here's the top 75 table, with a couple of new columns added:

	Player	Melog	Rank change (last update)	Melog change (last update)	Rank change (start of yr)	Melog change (start of yr)
1	Novak Djokovic	106.1	0	0.0	0	4.7
2	Roger Federer	70.4	1	5.7	1	5.0
3	Andy Murray	66.9	-1	0.0	-1	1.1
4	Rafael Nadal	40.1	0	-3.3	0	-0.2
5	Tomas Berdych	33.4	0	-2.3	0	-3.1
6	David Ferrer	30.7	1	0.1	0	-3.4
7	Kei Nishikori	29.3	1	-1.2	1	-2.2
8	Stanislas Wawrinka	29.1	-2	-3.6	-1	-3.5
9	Roberto Bautista Agut	23.2	1	1.6	2	4.7
10	Richard Gasquet	23.1	-1	-2.4	-1	-2.5
11	Milos Raonic	21.9	0	2.1	-1	3.0
12	Jo Wilfried Tsonga	20.2	0	0.7	1	2.5
13	John Isner	19.2	1	1.4	1	2.4
14	Gilles Simon	18.1	1	0.7	1	1.6
15	Gael Monfils	17.8	3	2.2	2	2.7
16	Kevin Anderson	16.7	-3	-2.5	-4	-1.5
17	Philipp Kohlschreiber	15.7	-1	-1.4	-1	-0.1
18	David Goffin	15.2	2	0.8	1	1.1
19	Jack Sock	14.5	0	-1.0	1	1.1
20	Marin Cilic	14.1	1	1.0	2	2.0
21	Grigor Dimitrov	13.9	-4	-1.6	0	1.2
22	Nick Kyrgios	11.6	1	-0.2	2	0.3
23	Bernard Tomic	11.4	2	0.6	0	0.1
24	Dominic Thiem	10.7	2	1.0	6	2.1
25	Ivo Karlovic	10.7	-3	-1.4	-7	-3.5
26	Alexandr Dolgopolov	9.5	4	0.8	5	0.9
27	Gilles Muller	9.4	-3	-2.3	-2	-1.7
28	Hyeon Chung	9.2	1	0.0	5	1.2
29	Fernando Verdasco	8.9	-1	-0.7	-2	-0.4
30	Fabio Fognini	8.9	4	0.7	9	2.3
31	Guillermo Garcia Lopez	8.9	-4	-0.8	-5	-0.7
32	Feliciano Lopez	8.4	0	-0.1	0	0.2
33	Steve Johnson	8.4	0	0.1	-5	-0.6
34	Jeremy Chardy	8.3	-3	-0.3	-5	-0.4
35	Pablo Cuevas	7.5	3	0.8	5	1.1
36	Albert Ramos	7.5	3	0.8	0	0.1
37	Joao Sousa	6.8	5	0.6	5	1.2
38	Leonardo Mayer	6.5	-1	-0.4	0	-0.2
39	Viktor Troicki	6.4	-4	-1.1	-5	-1.2
40	Juan Monaco	6.1	4	0.3	5	0.9
41	Teymuraz Gabashvili	5.9	2	0.0	8	1.2
42	Sam Querrey	5.8	-1	-0.4	1	0.3
43	Andreas Seppi	5.5	-7	-1.8	-8	-2.0
44	Thomaz Bellucci	5.1	4	0.0	2	-0.1
45	Benoit Paire	5.0	0	-0.7	2	-0.2
46	Marcos Baghdatis	4.6	-6	-1.6	-5	-1.4
47	Lukas Rosol	4.6	6	0.4	12	1.1
48	Vasek Pospisil	4.5	-1	-0.7	-4	-0.7
49	Denis Istomin	4.1	3	-0.1	4	0.0
50	Ivan Dodig	3.8	-1	-1.1	2	-0.5
51	Guido Pella	3.7	11	0.2	7	0.1
52	Simone Bolelli	3.7	-6	-1.9	-15	-3.1
53	Federico Delbonis	3.6	-3	-0.7	3	-0.3
54	Aljaz Bedene	3.6	1	-0.4	-4	-1.0
55	Taylor Harry Fritz	3.6	6	0.1	17	0.8
56	Adrian Mannarino	3.6	-5	-0.7	-5	-0.8
57	Nicolas Almagro	3.5	-3	-0.7	-3	-0.7
58	Pierre Hugues Herbert	3.4	21	1.0	23	1.1
59	Carlos Berlocq	3.4	7	0.1	12	0.5
60	Yen Hsun Lu	3.4	-1	-0.2	-5	-0.5
61	Paolo Lorenzi	3.4	-4	-0.5	14	0.7
62	Pablo Andujar	3.4	8	0.3	-5	-0.4
63	Sergiy Stakhovsky	3.3	-5	-0.4	-1	0.0
64	Andrey Kuznetsov	3.3	10	0.6	27	1.5
65	Robin Haase	3.2	-2	-0.2	9	0.5
66	Borna Coric	3.2	-10	-0.7	-5	-0.2
67	Jiri Vesely	3.2	-2	-0.1	-19	-1.6
68	John Millman	3.1	9	0.5	-3	-0.1
69	Thanasi Kokkinakis	3.1	-1	0.0	0	0.1
70	Tommy Robredo	3.1	-3	-0.1	-4	-0.1
71	Illya Marchenko	3.0	-11	-0.6	8	0.5
72	Donald Young	2.9	-8	-0.4	-8	-0.3
73	Jerzy Janowicz	2.8	-4	-0.3	-10	-0.5
74	Mikhail Kukushkin	2.7	-2	-0.1	-7	-0.4
75	Dusan Lajovic	2.7	3	0.2	1	0.0

So, as you can see, this year we'll be tracking both changes from the last time rankings were published and changes from the beginning of the year. In terms of the ordinal ranking, the biggest numbers in those columns at the moment belong to Pierre Hugues Herbert, who made a surprise third-round appearance in the Australian, and Andrey Kuznetsov, who made a surprise fourth-round appearance. Also of note is the continued upward progress of Taylor Harry Fritz, who came through qualifying to reach his first Grand Slam main draw and played a very close match against Jack Sock. Note that his wins in qualifying are not reflected in the ratings.

A little further up the list, the main thing that jumps out is that the stratification between the top 3 and everyone else seems to be increasing. The main reason for this is that last January, both Djokovic and Federer took bad losses, to Ivo Karlovic and Andreas Seppi, respectively. This January, Novak didn't lose at all, and while Roger lost twice (to Milos Raonic and Djokovic), neither of those losses looks nearly as bad as the Seppi defeat. Andy Murray, meanwhile, has had a nearly-identical January to what he had last year - but he's played Djokovic and Federer so much in the last year that the improvement in their ratings boosts his as well.

Meanwhile, the ratings of the rest of the top 8 have all declined since the beginning of the year, some of them by quite a bit. Rafael Nadal traded in a quarterfinal in Australia for a close first-round loss. Tomas Berdych reached the Doha final and the Australian semis last year, and defended neither of those performances in 2016. David Ferrer swapped his Doha title for an early loss at the same event. And Stan Wawrinka made the Australian semis last year, whereas this year he went down to Raonic in a five-set fourth-rounder.

In fact, if current trends hold (they will not, but bear with me), Roberto Bautista Agut has a shot to end up in the Melog top 5. His current placement at #9 is still so out-of-whack with his ATP rating that it's now long past time that we take a closer look at just what the heck Melog is thinking here.

In 2015, Roberto Bautista Agut had a match record of 42-29. He made it to 7 tour-level semifinals, but lost the first 5 of them, and didn't win a single title all year. He also didn't make it out of the round of 16 at a single Grand Slam or Masters event.

That is a year that you'd expect from someone ranked in the bottom half of the top 32 - and that's where he ended up, #25 according to the ATP. So Melog, which placed RBA in the #11 spot for 2015, has to think it sees something beyond just the normal results.

My guess is that it's performance in blowouts, both sets and matches, that Melog is looking at. In 2015, Bautista Agut went 32-16 in straight-set matches, and 8-11 in matches that went to a deciding set. (Those totals don't add up to his overall total because some matches, like those decided by withdrawals, don't fit in either category.) You'd expect matches that go to a decider to be closer, because they will typically be between closely-matched players - but a winning record in one category and a losing record in the other still seems odd.

The blowout sets are likely to be a significant factor as well. Bautista Agut had an 11-12 record in tiebreaks last year, but went 16-3 in sets with scores of 6-0 or 6-1, a figure roughly comparable to Kei Nishikori's 16-5 in the same type of sets. (This is not a rigorous examination by any means - but it might be a topic for further study at some point. Incidentally, neither Djokovic nor Federer lost a single set 6-0 or 6-1 last year.)

Research in most other sports has tended toward the conclusion that a team's record in blowouts is a better predictor of future success than its record in close games. Melog is making the same bet with Bautista Agut at the moment. The early 2016 returns (which are EARLY and NOT CONCLUSIVE) look pretty good; RBA is 5-0 in straight set matches this year, and 4-0 in 6-1 sets - but he's also 4-2 in matches that reach deciders, and 3-1 in tiebreaks. As a result, he's won the title in Auckland, and reached the fourth round of the Australian (beating Marin Cilic on the way, and pushing Berdych to five sets in his loss).

We'll see how Bautista Agut progresses for the rest of this year, starting this week in Sofia, where he's the #1 seed. We'll check back in after the first two weeks of February, which will also include appearances from top players in Rotterdam and Buenos Aires.