Welcome to the first issue in a new year of SRI Rankings Top 50 Men. Top 50 _Men_? Why yes, there's a Top 50 Women available now - at a newsgroup, web site, or mailbox near you! :-) This start-of-year issue is being brought out to show off the latest upgrade - the inclusion of Challenger results! In reality, all that this has done is push the top players' ratings up, and shuffled the order a tiny bit, as the "average" player at rating 500 is now of lesser standard, but is pinned down better by a larger database. It also means that we can now have reliable rankings for about 230 players instead of about 130.

A few players who have been more involved with second-tier Challenger tournaments have made large moves - for instance, Alex O'Brien and Jonathan Stark have performed well on the top-level ATP Tour, but still have some ordinary Challenger results on their backs (O'Brien was 8-4 in Challengers in '96). Felix Mantilla, Marc-Kevin Goellner, and Guillaume Raoux are among those whose Challenger results have been more impressive.

All praise be to Jacqueline Dupree for marking up the scrappy ATP web site's service into a wonderful database (URL available in blurb below). The ATP is unreliable with its Challenger updates in particular, so the inclusion of those tournaments will sometimes lag behind the Tour events. This will make very little difference to players' positions.

A quick roundup for those who are new to the SRI Rankings Top 50: (1) You can subscribe to either of the mailing lists (Top 50 Men or Top 50 Women) by writing to darren@aaii.oz.au (2) Tennis Worldwide Magazine carries an HTML version of the Men's chart: look at http://www.tennisw.com/twmag/ (3) See the blurb below for more information, and don't hesitate to write!

SRI Rankings Top 50 Issue #M1(#69). 3rd Jan 1997
Rank	Name	Rating Points	Rank Change	ATP Rank
1	Pete Sampras	1249	0	1
2	Michael Chang	1166	0	2
3	Boris Becker	1104	0	6
4	Todd Martin	1090	0	12
5	Goran Ivanisevic	1065	0	4
6	Yevgeny Kafelnikov	1036	+1	3
7	Andre Agassi	1021	-1	8
8	Thomas Enqvist	1020	0	9
9	Cedric Pioline	1003	+1	21
10	Thomas Muster	1000	+1	5
11	Stefan Edberg	1000	-2	14
12	Jim Courier	991	0	26
13	Michael Stich	982	0	16
14	Magnus Gustafsson	973	+2	17
15	Wayne Ferreira	958	+4	10
16	Richard Krajicek	955	-2	7
17	Mark Woodforde	948	0	27
18	Petr Korda	945	0	24
19	Marcelo Rios	929	+1	11
20	Mark Philippoussis	907	+1	30
21	Andrei Medvedev	905	+2	35
22	Patrick Rafter	895	0	62
23	Carlos Moya	865	+1	28
24	Richey Reneberg	865	+2	32
25	Marc Rosset	859	+4	22
26	Alex O'Brien	857	-11	38
27	Tim Henman	853	-2	29
28	Arnaud Boetsch	852	+2	33
29	Greg Rusedski	851	+2	48
30	Chris Woodruff	850	-3	43
31	Alex Corretja	846	+2	23
32	Jan Siemerink	842	-4	15
33	Vince Spadea	835	+1	54
34	Alberto Berasategui	831	+4	19
35	Albert Costa	828	-3	13
36	Guy Forget	827	-1	51
37	Todd Woodbridge	814	0	36
38	Slava Dosedel	807	+3	66
39	Hendrik Dreekmann	799	+1	49
40	Felix Mantilla	797	+9	18
41	Marc-Kevin Goellner	796	+10	53
42	MaliVai Washington	793	+4	20
43	Brett Steven	793	-7	100
44	Jason Stoltenberg	789	0	31
45	David Prinosil	786	0	39
46	Magnus Larsson	782	+4	46
47	Sergi Bruguera	771	+6	81
48	Renzo Furlan	771	0	40
49	Sebastien Lareau	769	-7	104
50	Guillaume Raoux	765	+17	72
51	Jonathan Stark	756	-12	68
56	Paul Haarhuis	733	+5	25
62	Nicklas Kulti	722	-19	64

blurb version 2.1

These are the current full-year ratings of top players according to a "spectral radius" program. Spectral radius algorithms have had much success with college sports and some other sports in giving a mathematically reliable ranking of the teams/players involved.

This ranking is not intended to completely replace the ATP Ranking. In fact, it shows that the ATP system is more reliable than most people think.

However, this system removes the two most disliked aspects of the ATP Computer ranking: (1) the 14-tournament divisor is replaced by an arbitrary 20-match qualification cut-off, allowing good players to show up earlier, and nullifying point-gathering by players by including even the weakest results in the average; (2) the stagger is virtually eliminated, by (in most cases) replacing last year's results only when the corresponding tournament is played this year. Note that both Challenger and ATP Tour results are used (but not the qualifying rounds).

SRI = Spectral Radius at Infinity. For a relevant reference, see

"The Perron-Frobenius Theorem and the Ranking of Football Teams" by James P. Keener, SIAM Review, v.35 no.1, p.80 (1993)

SRI Rankings Top 50 mailing list subscriptions (either Men's or Women's tennis rankings) and back issues are available by writing to the address below. An HTML version of this chart is available via Tennis Worldwide Magazine, http://www.tennisw.com/twmag/

Thanks to JD ( http://www.jdland.com/tennis.html ) for the data.