As the first quarter of the 2023 ATP season draws to a close, it feels like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle are finally starting to come together and the true hand players are playing with this year has been revealed. While some players have had a surprising start to the 2023 season, Novak Djokovic continues to dominate – despite his absence from the Sunshine Double due to ongoing visa restrictions. Nevertheless, Djokovic’s absence from the recent American swing has created the opportunity for a number of younger players to make a definitive mark for the season.
All-surface player ratings are one of the more useful tools for summarizing to what extent players have or failed to step up. With three months of competition on the books, let’s see how the current men’s standings look and how they compare to the expected form of top ATP players at the start of the year.
With only 1 loss of 16 matches played in 2023, Novak Djokovic has been relatively unchallenged. Being virtually untouchable at the events he has chosen to compete in has earned Djokovic a current rating of 2600 – a truly frightening level of ability that is +160 points higher than the second most highly rated player (and the only player to take a ‘W’ from Novak so far this year) Daniil Medvedev.
Medvedev is the most highly rated player among just 12 who have added 150 points or more to their player rating since the start of the year (Figure 2). The next most highly rated among the most improved is Jannik Sinner, who takes the fourth position in the current ratings just behind Carlos Alcaraz. Sinner and Alcaraz exchanged defeats at the Indian Wells and Miami Masters, two breakout events for Sinner in 2023.
Figure 1. Current all-surface standings for ATP players who were among the top 64 most highly rated at either the start of the year or now.
There is quite a gulf in current ability between Sinner and the group of the most highly rated players among the most improved from the start of 2023. In fact, only four are rated above 2000 points: Jiri Lehecka, Nicolas Jarry, Tallon Griekspoor, and Mackenzie Mcdonald. Mcdonald’s biggest results were in February where he reached the semifinals in Delray Beach and the quarterfinals in Acapulco. Jarry has already made the switch to clay courts and had some good results in Santiago and Rio De Janeiro. Griekspoor started 2023 with a bang, with match wins over Marin Cilic and Benjamin Bonzi on his way to a title in Pune. Griekspoor’s next biggest result was a semifinal in Rotterdam, where Jannik Sinner sent him packing. Lehecka was one of the biggest surprises of the Australian Open, where he had a string of upsets over Borna Coric, Cameron Norrie and Felix Auger Aliassime to reach the first quarterfinals of a Grand Slam in his career.
Figure 2. Start-of-year ratings versus current ratings for ATP players who were among the top 64 most highly rated at either time point. Named players are those with a change of 60 ratings point, in either direction, since the start of the year.
The players currently rated in the 2000s or above who are not among the most improved have, with a few exceptions, largely maintained their form since the start of the year. These include players like Sebastian Korda and Karen Khachanov. We can also see a number of players falling well above the slope in Figure 2, indicating that they have outperformed themselves so far this year. Players like Carlos Alcaraz, Tommy Paul and Andy Murray have added around 100 points to their ratings. The more highly rated a player is the more difficult it becomes to add each additional point to their rating, so these and other gains we have highlighted so far are among the most impressive this season.
From the highest rungs of the tennis ladder it is much easier to have a major fall. And, sadly, that has been the story of the first quarter for several players. Alexander Zverev is still struggling to regain his top form in his comeback from a major injury and is down 130 points in the rating from where he was at the start of the year. Matteo Berrettini and Felix Auger Aliassime have also both dropped in the ratings by more than 100 points, but for less obvious reasons.
We can’t end a discussion of the current ratings without talking about Rafael Nadal. Nadal who has not competed since losing to Mackenzie Mcdonald at the Australian Open. With the competition getting underway in Monte Carlo, Nadal is still not scheduled to play at any upcoming event and both injury and family are major challenges to Nadal making a return. Whether Nadal will appear on clay this summer and what form he will be in if he does will be the most open questions for the coming months of the ATP tour.
Would love it if you shared the raw data for the ratings