Grand Slam Tennis 2000 points

The reason is down to three men - Roger Federer, Rafa Nadal and Novak Djokovic. From the Australian Open 2004 to the US Open 2010 Federer and Nadal won 24 out of 28 Grand Slam titles (15 of them by Federer alone) and it included a run of 11 in a row shared between them. That streak is even more dominant than the Evert-Navratilova period of the 1980s. And just as back then Evert was replaced by Graf, in the men's it seems Novak Djokovic has come along to play the role of Steffi Graf. The past nine Grand Slams have all been shared by Nadal and Djokovic. They have played in four straight finals against each other - a feat never achieved by another male pair in the Open era.

And yet unlike Evert who retired and left the fight to Navratilova and Graf, Roger Federer has stuck around. In fact so well has he been playing in the past nine months that should he win the title he will reclaim the title of number one in the world.

So far ahead are Djokovic, Nadal and Federer that even if all three lost in the first round, and men's number 4, Andy Murray wins the title, Murray will stay at number 4.

The reason Federer is a chance to regain the Number One spot despite Nadal's and Djokovic's dominance is that Federer has continued to play well in non-Grand Slam tournaments (and not too bad in the big ones) and also because last year he only made it to the Quarter Final at Wimbledon he has fewer points to defend than the other two. If Federer wins he will be number one because he and Djokovic are drawn to meet in the semi finals:

Player	Current Ranking Points	Minus Last Year's Wimbledon Result	QF	SF
12, 280	10, 280	10, 640	11, 000	11, 480	12, 280
10, 060	8, 860	9, 220	9, 580	10, 860
9, 435	9, 075	9, 795	10, 275	11, 075
6, 260	6, 620	6, 980	7, 460	8, 260

Tennis is a brutal sport - you did well last year like Bernard Tomic did when he made it to the Quarter Final? Great, you had those ranking points for 12 months, now they are gone. You want to stay where you are? Then you need to repeat that great run you had last year. If you don't then you fall, and so too do chances of getting a favourable seeding at tournaments, dreams of playing on centre courts and hopes of being adored by marketing people worldwide. So important was last year's Wimbledon performance to Tomic's ranking that his loss in the first round this year will likely see him fall from number 27 in the world to around 45th in the world.

But while falling down the ranking's mountain is enough of a worry, what about the climb up to the summit?

Bear in mind that winning a Grand Slam tournament is worth 2, 000 points; winning a tournament like the Sydney International gets you only 250 points. The lead Djokovic has over the Number 5 in the world, David Ferrer is more than the total number of points Ferrer has. In effect the number 1, 000 player in the world with 11 ranking points is numerically closer to overtaking Ferrer than Ferrer is to overtaking Djokovic.