Seven things to know about the ATP's updated ranking system

While professional tennis is back, in various locales around the world, travel restrictions and stringent health and safety measures due to the coronavirus pandemic will continue to impact players for the foreseeable future. As such, the ATP announced on Wednesday that it is extending and updating its revised ranking system through mid-August.

Here are a few things to know about the latest update:

1. The revised ATP ranking system has been extended through the week of August 9, 2021. The ATP Masters 1000 event in Toronto is scheduled for that week, which matches up with the last week of the tour suspension in 2020.

2. The extension applies the ‘Best Of’ rule to results from events held between the weeks of March 4 and August 5, 2019. If a player played an event during that period—all of those events weren't held in 2020—then they’ll be able to keep those ranking points on their ranking until 2022, with one condition:

3. Results from the ‘Best Of’ period in 2019 will be weighted at 50 percent. Take, for example, Roger Federer, who won the ATP Masters 1000 event in Miami in 2019, earning 1,000 ranking points. He didn’t play Miami in 2020 because it was canceled, but he’ll be able to keep 500 ranking points until 2022 (50 percent of his 2019 total), even though he's not playing the tournament this year. If a player betters his 2019 result in 2021—say, Novak Djokovic wins the title—he'll keep all of those ranking points instead.

4. The drop-off or reduction will occur at the designated drop-off date for each event. So, after Miami this year, a player will either keep half of their points from 2019 or their full points from 2021, whichever is greater.

5. Results from Kitzbuhel, Hamburg, Rome and Roland Garros in 2020 are included in this rule. Those four clay-court events were rescheduled from the tour suspension period to the fall in 2020. When they’re played in 2021, a player can keep either 50 percent, of the points they earned at those events in 2020, or 100 percent of the points they earned at those events in 2021—whichever is greater—until 2022.

6. All results prior to Wimbledon this year will be counted as ‘Best of Other’ in a player’s ranking. An ATP player’s ranking includes results from 19 events: ordinarily the four Grand Slams, eight mandatory Masters 1000 and seven ‘Best Other’ events (ATP Cup, ATP 500, ATP 250, Challengers and ITFs), plus the ATP Finals, should they play it.

7. Points are scheduled to start dropping off as normal beginning the week of August 16, 2021. That will match up with the first week of the restart in 2020.