Ranking Reaction

Novak Djokovic has now spent eight years’ worth of weeks at No. 1 on the ATP rankings

No other man has even spent six years of weeks there.

Published Mar 11, 2024

Match Highlight: N. Djokovic Def A. Vukic; Indian Wells 2R

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Novak Djokovic just hit a big milestone two days ago, recording the 400th Masters 1000 win of his career with his opening victory at Indian Wells, and today he hits another one.

On Monday he’ll kick off his record-extending 416th career week at No. 1 on the ATP rankings, which is exactly eight years’ worth of weeks at the top spot (eight years times 52 weeks a year).

No other man even has six years’ worth of weeks there.

MOST WEEKS AT NO. 1 IN ATP RANKINGS HISTORY (since 1973):

416 weeks: Novak Djokovic [8 years]
310 weeks: Roger Federer [5 years & 50 weeks]
286 weeks: Pete Sampras [5 years & 26 weeks]
270 weeks: Ivan Lendl [5 years & 10 weeks]
268 weeks: Jimmy Connors [5 years & 8 weeks]
209 weeks: Rafael Nadal [4 years & 1 week]
170 weeks: John McEnroe [3 years & 14 weeks]
109 weeks: Bjorn Borg [2 years & 5 weeks]
101 weeks: Andre Agassi [1 year & 49 weeks]
80 weeks: Lleyton Hewitt [1 year & 28 weeks]

Since first rising to No. 1 in 2011 after winning his first Wimbledon title, Djokovic has spent almost two thirds of the time at the top spot.

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Since Djokovic first rose to No. 1 on the ATP rankings on July 4th, 2011 after winning his first Wimbledon title, there have been 641 weeks of ATP rankings, and he’s held the top spot in 416 of those weeks—that’s 64.9%, which is almost two thirds of the time.

And given how little he’s defending over the next few months, Djokovic looks primed to keep adding more and more weeks.

First of all, Djokovic currently holds a hefty ranking points lead over all of his closest competitors on the ATP rankings. With 9,675 ranking points, the world No. 1 is 870 ahead of No. 2 Carlos Alcaraz (8,805), 1,405 ahead of No. 3 Jannik Sinner (8,270) and 1,960 ahead of No. 4 Daniil Medvedev (7,715).

But more importantly, Djokovic is defending just a fraction of the ranking points those three men are defending over the next two-and-a-half months leading up to Roland Garros. Djokovic is only defending a total of 315 ranking points in that period—meanwhile, Alcaraz, Sinner and Medvedev are defending 2,905, 1,500 and 2,870 ranking points, respectively.

After battling past Australia’s Aleksandar Vukic in his opening match at Indian Wells on Saturday, Djokovic will be back in action in tennis paradise on Monday night for his third-round match against Italian lucky loser Luca Nardi.

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