Most fans will have at least one moment during the season when they need to figure out how the tennis rankings actually work. A big one came overnight leading into Monday October 21, when Aryna Sabalenka overtook Iga Swiatek as the women’s world No. 1 because of an unheralded WTA Tour rule that the organization did not explain or forecast before making the change.
This part of the tennis calendar is generally a good time to have a grasp on them, as players up and down the ATP (men’s) and WTA (women’s) rankings race for the end-of-season Tour Finals at the top and the seeding and main draw places for the Australian Open in the lower echelons.
Players get more than $300,000 ($231,000) just for showing up at the Tour Finals while winning a round-robin match carries a prize of nearly $400,000. Dozens of players hovering in the neighborhood of 26-60 are desperately trying to hold steady or catch fire to finish the year in the top 32 so they can just about lock-in being seeded in Melbourne for 2025. Further down, the top 104 are trying to avoid having to go through qualifying.
“I’m kind of interested in how the rankings and the awarding of these points actually work. I’m going to try to figure it out,” any given tennis fan might say, before navigating to either the…
