John Isner may be feeling down. He was close to winning his first title on clay. He had match points (well, one). He lost to his good buddy, Sam Querrey, in three sets, instead.
And yet, when the rankings were updated on Monday, it was Querrey whose ranking had jumped up. Isner is ranked 19th, 2 spots better than last week. Querrey, although gaining in points, remained at 22. How did this happen?
It turns out, Querrey was somewhat a victim of his own success. Last summer, Querrey made it to several finals without winning, including Newport (loss to Rajeev Ram) and Indianapolis (loss to Robby Ginepri). These were both ATP 250 events. Now, it turns out, Sam can only count so many of those matches to his ranking. Thus, in order to make space for his Belgrade win, one of his finalist points was bumped into not counting. Thus, he got 250 points for winning, but since a bunch of other “required” tournaments had to count (some for 0), one of his 150 point finalist points was pushed into not counting (only 18 tournaments count to your ranking). Thus, he only netted 100 points. Now, this puts him very close to Stepanek and Haas, who are mere points ahead of him, so he did get “better”. Meanwhile, John Isner, who didn’t have a lot of great results last year (or this), pushed a 0 point in some tournament from the “countable” tournaments into the “non-countable” tournaments, and thus, his 150 points was worth more to him. His total number of points jumped up 150 to Querrey’s 100, despite Querrey’s win.
And, as it turns out, he had been just enough points ahead of Querrey prior to Belgrade, it was enough to get him past Stepanek and Haas.
