Stats Insider's Tennis World Rankings

As tennis bettors, we've all looked at a Grand Slam, ATP or WTA tournament at some point and seen a few favourites we've never heard of, Googled for news, checked the official rankings and had to ask ourselves whether it was worth a punt or not. 

"Is Player A (the favourite) ranked higher than Player B?"

"Has Player B had an injury, or been out of form recently?"

"Does Player A perform better on this surface?"

The official rankings can only tell us so much, which is why - prior to the 2020 Australian Open - we've custom-built our own system, separate from the official ranks, filterable by court or surface. We think they're better than the official rankings. Let's talk about why.

How do the official World Rankings work?

Put simply, tennis players accrue official ranking points when playing each ATP or WTA tournament across the 52-week season. Points drop off from the previous period as the players play each tournament in the new season, with the points achieved at the latest or most recent tournament replacing points gathered at the same point in the previous year.

The official rankings take into account the players' wins and losses, and how far they advance in each tournament, with larger tournaments worth more ranking points (and prize money) than some of the smaller ones.

How do the Stats Insider World Rankings work?

Here's where the Stats Insider Tennis World Rankings are different.

The SI World Rankings don't just include how many matches or rounds in a tournament a player has won or lost. Our rankings take into account wins and losses, as well as who each player's opponent was (and by default, their ranking) in each of those wins and losses, plus the type of surface the match was played on, to determine how many points are allocated or removed from the player's ranking.

You, the punter, can also filter our rankings page by court surface, allowing a better understanding of which players perform best on the different surfaces. At the time of writing (just prior to the Australian Open), local hope Nick Kyrgios is ranked #16 on the hard court (used in the Australian Open and US Open), #26 on grass (Wimbledon), and #63 on clay (French Open). His overall SI Ranking is #20, while the official ATP rankings have Kyrgios sitting at #26 overall.

VIEW THE STATS INSIDER WORLD RANKINGS

Some other factors to mention:

• SI Rankings do not take into account whether the tournament is a Grand Slam or a regular ATP/WTA tournament. Every player is ranked accordingly, regardless of the size of the tournament.
• The overall rankings are made up of a combination of the individual surface rankings, weighted based on regularity of play on those surfaces, for example; very few tournaments are played on grass courts compared to hard courts, therefore a player's hard court ranking is weighted more heavily than their grass court ranking.
• The rankings for ATP and WTA tournaments have been built slightly differently due to a massive differential in data available from the two governing bodies.
• Our overall tennis model has been built with point-by-point player data from over 40,000 ATP ranked matches dated back to 2013 (although this early data won't have affected the current rankings). 
• Keep in mind these ranking are for your information only, and should not be used to make betting decisions. Rankings make up just a small part of our Tennis match prediction model, with many other data points and multiple variables added to the algorithm.

The Stats Insider Tennis World Rankings are available here and will be updated after each tournament. You can see all our latest Tennis match predictions, right here.

Got a question about our rankings? Ask away or just tell us what you think on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.