Why points expire after exactly 52 weeks, what “points to defend” means, and why a dropping title doesn’t always cost you a place.
Fall-off is the most misunderstood part of the tennis rankings. Once you understand it, the week-to-week churn of the rankings stops looking random.
Ranking points sit on your total for 52 weeks, then they vanish. The timing is exact. Whatever you won at last year’s Wimbledon comes off the week this year’s Wimbledon is played, replaced by whatever you earn this time around. Every result you own carries an expiry date, which means part of your future ranking is already locked in by matches you’ve finished playing.
A player’s points to defend in a given week are the ones about to expire, won in that same week a year earlier. Reach a final last year (say 300 points), lose in the second round this year (say 50), and you are “defending 300 and earning 50”. That is a net loss before anyone else has struck a ball. It also explains a curious sight: a player winning matches at a tournament while sliding down the rankings, because the old, bigger result is coming off faster than the new one goes on.
The ranking counts only your best results (best 19 on the ATP, best 18 on the WTA; see how ATP rankings work), so a result falling off doesn’t always subtract its full value. If a better result has been sitting in reserve, uncounted because your slots were full, it gets promoted into the freed slot and cushions the fall. The net ranking impact of a drop is often a good deal smaller than the raw points leaving the board.
atprank.com works out this net figure for every upcoming drop rather than the raw number alone. That is what turns the fall-off calendar into a genuine forecasting tool for where a player’s rank is heading.
Expiry dates are known in advance, so a player’s ranking future is readable before it arrives: the weeks they’re exposed, the points at risk, and the total they’d need just to stand still. Every free player page shows the next drop and which results aren’t counting. The full week-by-week fall-off calendar is a Pro feature. Open any player from the live ranking to see it, or read how we compute the net impact.
Point values in the example are illustrative. atprank.com is an independent project, not affiliated with the ATP, WTA or ITF.
