Novak Djokovic tops the men’s tennis rankings for a 100th week in his career, the ninth man to reach the milestone on the latest list issued on Monday by the ATP.
The Serb Djokovic has 11,120 points for a slim advantage over French and US Open champion Rafael Nadal of Spain (10,860) and Briton Andy Murray (7,075).
Andre Agassi (101 weeks), Rafael Nadal (102), Bjorn Borg (109), John McEnroe (170), Jimmy Connors (268), Ivan Lendl (270), Pete Sampras (286) and Roger Federer (302) are the other players to spend 100 and more weeks atop the rankings.
“I was taught to dream big and to dream to be number one in the world,” said Djokovic, who reached the top for the first time in July 2011.
“It takes years of hard work and dedication. It is a long process to become a champion. Tennis is a very specific and unique sport, where you take all the credit or all the blame.” However, he is expected not to top the year-ending rankings because Nadal has returned strong from injury this year and has no points to defend for the remainder of 2013 in the rankings which takes into account results over the past 52 weeks.
PTI adds :
India’s top singles player Somdev Devvarman returned to top-100 after a gap of one year and nine months as he jumped three places to 98 in the latest ATP singles rankings.
Somdev had achieved a career-best rank of 62 in 2011 but struggled after that as a shoulder injury halted his progress.
Of late he has done well, reaching second rounds of the US Open and the ATP 500 event in Washington via qualifiers.
Also making tremendous progress was Yuki Bhambri as he zoomed up to 287 with a huge jump of 190 places, following his superb performance at the Taiwan Challenger, where he ended runner-up after qualifying for the main draw.
In the doubles, US Open champion Leander Paes (5), Rohan Bopanna (7) and Mahesh Bhupathi (10) remained unchanged in top-10.
Left-hander Divij Sharan had marginally improved as he was 69, a one place gain. Purav Raja was the fifth top-100 player for India at 89.
ATP top 10 : 1. Novak Djokovic, Serbia, 11,120 points 2. Rafael Nadal, Spain, 10,860 3. Andy Murray, Britain, 7,075 4. David Ferrer, Spain, 6,710 5. Roger Federer, Switzerland, 4,515 6. Tomas Berdych, Czech Republic, 4,460 7. Juan Martin del Potro, Argentina, 4,425 8. Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, France, 3,325 9. Richard Gasquet, France, 3,165 10. Stanislas Wawrinka, Switzerland, 3150.
