Tennis

Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic invest in new tennis ranking which Rafael Nadal will love


Federer, Djokovic and Nadal continue to dominate men’s tennis with their position still going unchallenged.

The ‘big three’ have swapped positions in the official rankings over the years with Djokovic currently holding the world No 1 spot.

Federer could have overtaken Nadal as the world No 2 at Wimbledon if he had beaten Djokovic in the final.

But there is a new tennis ranking system gaining popularity which could rival the current one.

The ATP and WTA tours rank their players based on a mixture of matches won, which round they reach in tournaments and the level of those events over one year.

However, the Universal Tennis Rating is proving a popular system used across the world for rankings and do things in a different way.

The main difference with UTR is that they take into account the strength of the opponent and games won as opposed to the result of the match.

It means, for example, that even if a player loses 7-6 in the final set to a higher ranked player, UTR would reward the loser for pushing a strong opponent close.

And this new ranking system works in favour of Nadal, who holds the world No 2 spot over Djokovic with Federer remaining third.

There are some other surprises on UTR with Jan-Lennard Struff jumping up rom 36 on the ATP rankings to 11th and Tomas Berdych moving from 108th to 17th to name but a few.

The Universal Tennis Rating is also proving popular among players with Federer’s management group, Team 8, named as investors along with Djokovic.

Nadal’s academy is also listed as a partner for the UTR system.

“We’re now just beginning the initiative to bridge down into local tennis, recreational tennis,” Mark Leschly, the chairman and CEO of Universal Tennis, told tennishead.

“Our goal is to ultimately figure out…there are 100 million people who play tennis in the world.

“Can we possibly rate them all? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if everyone was rated and we can create level-based play? People can bridge across gender, across age, across geography.

“What we’ve now begun to roll out are the next pieces of a tournament management system, as well as what we call an engagement platform, which is really the ability, once you know your rating, you can start participating in events.

“You can start creating a profile for yourself, start connecting with friends and start to engage around the world of tennis using technology, which until today people just haven’t had the ability to do.”



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