It is estimated that there are around 80 million tennis players worldwide, making tennis one of the most popular sports in the world.

These players range from elite professionals to casual amateurs. No matter what level you’re playing at, competition is always key.

The best way to keep tennis competitive is to have good ranking systems in place. With this in mind, tennis standings are crucial to the progression of the sport.

Read on as we look more closely at tennis standings and their relevance for the analysis of the sport at every level.

How Do Tennis Standings Work?

Basically, tennis standings are a means of ranking tennis players. There are many different sets of tennis standings at both the amateur and the professional level.

The importance of tennis standings from a practical standpoint is that they inform seeds in tournaments.

Tournament organizers like to structure competitions so that the knockout rounds get more competitive as they progress, ideally finishing with the two best players in the final. They use seeding to achieve this.

Professional Tennis Standings

Professional tennis standings rank the very best tennis players in the world.

The ranking mechanism used changes from one organizer to the next. However, most rankings tables rely on a points system of some kind.

One of the best-known professional tennis standings tables is the ATP rankings system. Many fans consider this to be the gold standard in professional tennis rankings and think of the top player in the ATP rankings as the top-rated player in the world.

A player’s ranking on this table is calculated based on their performance in:

• the four Grand Slam tournaments of the year
• the eight mandatory ATP Tour Masters 1000 tournaments
• the ATP Finals of the previous year
• their best six results in all other eligible tournaments from that year

Currently, Novak Djokovic is the highest-rated male player on the ATP rankings, while Ashleigh Barty is the highest-rated female.

Amateur Tennis Standings

Amateur tennis standings are far more diverse than professional ones.

There are different competitions and rankings systems in every country. Since the players generally don’t play tennis full-time, international competition is far less common.

However, none of this means that the competition at the amateur level is any less fierce. Many amateur competitors are hugely talented, and could have gone on to play professionally were it not for family or professional commitments. 

Prabir Purohit is one example of a great player who balances his tennis exploits with other important pursuits. When he isn’t competing on the court, Purohit is working as the vice president of a Fortune 500 energy company.

Keeping Up With Tennis at Every Level

If you’re a tennis fan, you need to learn how to use tennis standings. It’s the easiest way to discover who’s doing what in the game, and how one player compares to another.

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