Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic To Invest in New Ranking System For Tennis Players

Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) presently ranks Novak Djokovic as the World Number one tennis player, but according to Universal Tennis Rating (UTR), the Spaniard wizard, Rafael Nadal ranks on the summit, (Nadal is presently ranked number two in the world). Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic have decided to become the investors for UTR system.

The scoring system in tennis makes the sport intriguing, until the final point the winner of the match remains undecided and sometimes the matches result in an uncanny outcome and the player, who has won a greater number of break points and total points happens to be the loser.

The management group, Team 8, partly-owned by Roger Federer is an investor and Novak Djokovic mentioned about UTR improving the ecosystem. The UTR system analyses the performance of a player in a particular match and records the number of games won by the player. If a player loses 7-6 in the final set to a higher ranked player, the UTR system would reward the losing player for pushing his/her strong opponent to conclude the match.

UTR uses a 16-point scale (1 through to 16.50) and ranks the players according to their performance in their previous 30 matches and it considers the records for all the top professionals, amateurs and recreational players. 

According to UTR, Djokovic is awarded 16.13 points and Nadal 16.26. Presently, the players such as Juan Martin del Potro and Marin Cilic are ranked outside the top ten ATP rankings and with UTR calculations, they happen to take the top ten spots on the world rankings chart. 

“We’re now just beginning the initiative to bridge down into local tennis, recreational tennis,” the chairman and CEO of Universal Tennis said. “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,” he continued.

The colleges in the United States have begun using the global ranking system for their selection purposes. In Britain, Progress Tour is a group of events which use UTR and this January, Tennis Australia became its major strategic partner of UTR. Also, Tennis Channel extensively it in their broadcasts.