If John McEnroe’s words are to be believed, Novak Djokovic might have played his last match of the year. And that being the case, the question on everyone’s lips is whether he would still end the year as the world number or one of the others could overtake him?
McEnroe, who had earlier reckoned Djokovic wasn’t really unfit when he had called for a trainer during his second round match, said on ESPN, he reckoned the Serb’s season was over.
He said:
“I don’t think we will be seeing Novak Djokovic for the rest of the year.”
And while that is terrible news for Djokovic fans, the question now is how does it affect the individual rankings at the top of the pile.
Djokovic is the world number one on the ATP live rankings with 11685 points but is bound to lose aplenty thanks to his fourth round withdrawal against Stan Wawrinka. As the 2018 US Open winner, he was defending 2000 points and was left with just 180 this year, which should reduce that number by 1820 points.
With Rafael Nadal, who is second on the rankings with 7945 points, having made the semi-final last US Open, he is a win away from at least levelling his own points tally.
And if Nadal goes on to win the US Open, that will give him an addition 1280 points, which straightaway changes the equation dramatically for him – a minus 1820 for Djokovic and a plus 1280 for Nadal is a difference of 3100 made up in just this tournament.
With Nadal having no points to defend after the US Open from last year, and with Djokovic having quite a few more to defend, the Spaniard should have no trouble overtaking the Serb. After all Djokovic had made it to the final at the Shanghai Masters, Paris Masters and the World Tour Finals, losing each time but accumulating a total of 2200 points over those three tournaments.
What that means is even if Nadal doesn’t participate in any tournament, but if Djokovic misses out out of the rest of the season, Nadal would have pipped the world number one on the ATP live rankings.
Roger Federer is a further 1000 points behind Nadal but he is defending even lesser this US Open. He was sent packing in the fourth round last year by John Millman, which means a title win in this last major will earn him an extra 1820, to go with the 1820 points that Djokovic will lose – a jump of 3640 points.
This will again leave Federer to cover up for less than 1500 points in the rest of the season and while it’s not beyond the realms of expectations, it might not be as straightforward for him. After all, Federer followed his US Open campaign last year with a win at the Basel Open, and semi-final defeats at Shanghai, Paris and World Tour Finals.
Federer will need to defend the Basel title for starters and then do better than what he did at the other three tournaments as well. Meanwhile, he will also have to hope for Nadal to slip up at those remaining two Masters.
All of this would obviously be moot if Djokovic regains his fitness in time to participate in some of the tournaments ahead, and it would make for a more keen tussle heading into that ATP Finals at O2.
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