SPRING 2025

AUTHORS

Seth Richey, Florida State University ’25
Ryan Rodenberg, Florida State University

ABSTRACT

We test whether recent policy changes by the governing body of men’s professional tennis—the ATP Tour—have created a statistical incongruence in the ordinal ranking of players worldwide.  Using a quartet of parsimonious methods, we find prima facie evidence of a so-called ‘bottleneck’ in the ATP Tour men’s singles rankings consistent with publicly acknowledged criticism of the player evaluation system following alteration of the ranking point distribution schedule between the 2023 season and the 2024 season.

Specifically, we pinpoint that #100 in the men’s singles rankings exhibits characteristics consistent with a bottleneck that would seemingly impact meritorious promotion and relegation within the sport.  Our findings highlight the importance of using sports analytics when designing sport governance models and evaluating the impact of major policy revisions.