By Chris Oddo | @TheFanChild | Monday November 22, 2021
Novak Djokovic’s brilliant 2021 season has come to a close, and Sunday’s title match at the Nitto ATP Finals means that the rest of the field is also done for the season.
The Serb stays atop the ATP rankings, claiming his record seventh year-end No.1 ranking after a season that saw him push to become the first player to win the Calendar-year Grand Slam since 1969. Though he fell short of that conquest, Djokovic wins three Grand Slams and five totals. He also broke the record for all-time weeks at No.1 – after running the table at No.1 all season, he begins week No.348 today.
At No.2, Daniil Medvedev became the first player outside Djokovic, Roger Federer, Andy Murray and Nadal to finish year-end No. 2 since Andy Roddick in 2004. He also became the first Russian to finish No. 2 since Marat Safin in 2000.
Three players claimed a year-end Top-10 ranking for the first time – No. 8 Casper Ruud (22), No. 9 Hubert Hurkacz (24) and No. 10 Jannik Sinner (20). Sinner became the youngest to finish in the Top 10 since Juan Martin del Potro (20) in 2008.
The rankings skewed younger this year as well. There were eight players aged 25-and-under in the year-end Top 10 for the first time in 26 years, since 1995. Four of the Top 5 players were 25-and-under, which marks the first time this occurred since 2009.
According to the ATP, the average age of the Top 10 was less than 26 years old (at 25.6), the youngest since 2009 (25.0).
Notes and Numbers
3 – Alexander Zverev becomes the first German to finish in the ATP’s Top 3 since No. 3 Boris Becker in 1994.
4 – Stefanos Tsitsipas finishes in Top 10 for the third straight season with year-end best ranking (was No. 6 in 2019-20).
17 – Rafael Nadal is the oldest in the ATP’s year-end Top 10 at 35 and finishes a record 17th straight year in the Top 10. Nadal has the second-most Top 10 year-end finishes in history (behind Federer with 18).
8 – Casper Ruud makes history for Norway, becoming the first Norwegian to finish in Top 10 in history of the ATP Rankings after climbing from No. 27 last season.
9 – Hubert Hurkacz does the same for Poland, finishing in Top 10 in history of the FedEx ATP Rankings. The World No. 9 made second-biggest jump into the Top 10 from last year (No. 34). 12 - The United States led all countries with 12 players in the Top 100 (most since 1996), followed by Spain with 10, France with 9, Italy with eight and Argentina with 7.
40 - Roger Federer, 40, finished as the oldest player in the Top 100 at No. 16. It was the Swiss superstar’s record 21st consecutive year in the Top 20. There were 31 players 30 and older in the year-end Top 100, in total.
32 - Next Gen ATP Finals champion Carlos Alcaraz was the biggest riser inside the ATP's Top 50, climbing 109 spots from No. 141 to a year-end ranking of No. 32. Alcaraz, 18, is the youngest player in the Top 100 and the top player in the year-end rankings at his age since 18-year-old Andrei Medvedev was No. 24 in 1992.
252 - Biggest rise inside the Top-100. Juan Manuel Cerundolo, 20, and Jenson Brooksby, 21, made the biggest jumps into the Top 100 from last year. Cerundolo rose from No. 341 to No. 89 (252 spots) and Brooksby climbed 251 spots from No. 307 to No. 56.
34 - Per the ATP Tour, overall 34 countries were represented in the year-end Top 100 of the FedEx ATP Rankings.