THIS WEEK: Three of my favourite tournaments this week. The anachronism of Newport, Rhode Island, on grass, was won by Chris Woodruff on the comeback trail. Woodruff was a top 20 player in the SRI Rankings Top 50 Men back in 1996, and this win takes him back into the Top 50, up from 67 to 43 (ATP #116 -> #91).

In Gstaad, Switzerland, Albert Costa (up from 31 to 26, ATP #28 -> #22) won the final over Nicolas Lapentti (up from 45 to 37, ATP #26 -> #21), who had eliminated the injured defending champion Alex Corretja (down from 10 to 14, ATP #8 -> #14).

And in the delightfully-named town of Bastad, Sweden, only two seeds survived to the quarter-finals (which is one more than in Newport!). Costa Rica's Juan Antonio Marin (up from 155 to 121, ATP #97 -> #69) defeated local Andreas Vinciguerra (provisional rating 693, ATP #390 -> #205) in the final. In the semi-final he beat another player on a comeback, ATP #104 Nicklas Kulti. Kulti looks like returning to the top 25 this year. Last year's finalists were the higher-profile pair of Magnus Gustafsson (down from 29 to 46, ATP #62 -> #79) and Boris Becker (down from 32 to 35, ATP #54 -> #88).

SRI Rankings Top 50 Issue #M97. 13th July 1999
Rank Name Rating Points Rank Change ATP Rank
1 Pete Sampras 1153 0 3
2 Andre Agassi 1134 0 1
3 Patrick Rafter 1098 0 2
4 Richard Krajicek 1052 0 7
5 Todd Martin 1023 0 8
6 Greg Rusedski 1014 0 10
7 Gustavo Kuerten 1000 0 5
8 Yevgeny Kafelnikov 995 0 4
9 Karol Kucera 986 0 13
10 Tim Henman 978 +1 6
11 Mark Philippoussis 966 +1 12
12 Marcelo Rios 958 +1 11
13 Thomas Enqvist 946 +1 18
14 Alex Corretja 945 -4 14
15 Felix Mantilla 940 0 15
16 Lleyton Hewitt 932 0 32
17 Younes El Aynaoui 930 +3 29
18 Nicolas Kiefer 924 -1 17
19 Jerome Golmard 912 +2 24
20 Francisco Clavet 908 -1 23
21 Carlos Moya 903 -3 9
22 Dominik Hrbaty 873 0 19
23 Magnus Larsson 868 +4 63
24 Tommy Haas 865 0 16
25 Fernando Meligeni 865 -2 30
26 Albert Costa 861 +5 22
27 Vince Spadea 844 -1 26
28 Thomas Johansson 828 -3 20
29 Michael Chang 822 +1 59
30 Jason Stoltenberg 808 -2 60
31 Goran Ivanisevic 796 +2 28
32 Cedric Pioline 792 +3 25
33 Sebastien Grosjean 787 +3 34
34 Jonas Bjorkman 786 0 36
35 Boris Becker 783 -3 88
36 Marat Safin 781 +1 37
37 Nicolas Lapentti 779 +8 21
38 Jan-Michael Gambill 778 0 47
39 Jim Courier 776 0 41
40 Marc Rosset 773 +3 31
41 Wayne Ferreira 759 -1 33
42 Juan Carlos Ferrero 756 +2 97
43 Chris Woodruff 748 +24 91
44 Andrei Pavel 747 +8 43
45 Jiri Novak 746 -4 58
46 Magnus Gustafsson 746 -17 79
47 David Prinosil 741 -5 55
48 Daniel Nestor 739 +2 64
49 Thomas Muster 736 -1 85
50 Stefan Koubek 736 -3 56
 
NQ Nicklas Kulti 883 NQ 104
52 Magnus Norman 728 +9 50
53 Bohdan Ulihrach 725 +7 38
54 Christian Ruud 724 +8 45
59 Fabrice Santoro 719 -10 42
60 Andrei Medvedev 716 -14 35
67 Mariano Zabaleta 692 +3 27
121 Juan Antonio Marin 584 +34 69

Rating Winners:
Chris Woodruff +55 (W Newport 99)
Albert Costa +41 (W Gstaad 99, QF 98)
Nicolas Lapentti +30 (RU def Corretja Gstaad 99, 1R 98)
Younes El Aynaoui +27 (SF def Rios Gstaad 99)
Magnus Larsson +22 (1R Bastad 98)

Rating Losers:
Magnus Gustafsson -75 (W Bastad 98, 2R 99)
Alex Corretja -33 (W Gstaad 98, 1R ret 99)
Boris Becker -32 (RU Gstaad 98)
Jason Stoltenberg -30 (SF Newport 98, 1R 99)
Thomas Johansson -29 (SF Bastad 98, 2R 99)
Andrei Medvedev -27 (RU Bastad 98)

[ wo - walkover, wd - withdrew, ret - retired, def - defeated ]


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For more information on the SRI Rankings Top 50 see the web page below.

... Darren O'Shaughnessy ... http://www.rankingsoftware.com ...