The guide
It isn't a calendar-year table. It doesn't just reward whoever wins this week. It's a mechanism that rolls, tournament after tournament, and can drop a player down the rankings even without losing a match — simply because they didn't play.
↓ the points going up, the points expiring, and how many tournaments really count
The mechanism
When a player wins a round, those points enter their tally immediately. But they only stay for a fixed amount of time: exactly 52 weeks, not a day more. When the tournament comes back around a year later, the previous edition's points leave the tally the moment the new ones start arriving.
That's why a player can lose ranking positions in a week where they haven't played a single point: somewhere, 52 weeks back on the calendar, a result they once built was quietly expiring.
The gold section is the tipping point: results just past this threshold no longer exist for the ranking, whatever they were once worth.
The jargon
When a commentator says a player "has to defend" a tournament's points, here's what they mean: a year ago, in that same week, that player got a certain result — and in a few days those points expire. To avoid losing ground, they need to match or beat that result this time around.
If they don't play, or go out early, those points disappear anyway: the deadline doesn't wait for anyone. That's why two players with the same number of wins at a tournament can move in opposite directions in the rankings — it depends on what they were defending.
The live ATP ranking and live WTA ranking on this site show exactly that: not just today's position, but a projection of where a player would land based on how the current tournament is going — accounting for what's about to expire.
The numbers, tournament by tournament
A Grand Slam is worth four times as much as an ATP 500 for a title, but the gap is even starker in the early rounds: losing in the first round of a Masters 1000 is worth more than winning an ATP 250 in the second. Here's the official ATP table, category by category.
| Category | R128 | R64 | R32 | R16 | QF | SF | Final | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grand Slam | 10 | 50 | 100 | 200 | 400 | 800 | 1300 | 2000 |
| Masters 1000 | — | 25 | 50 | 100 | 200 | 400 | 650 | 1000 |
| ATP 500 | — | — | 10 | 45 | 90 | 180 | 300 | 500 |
| ATP 250 | — | — | 0 | 25 | 50 | 100 | 165 | 250 |
| ATP Finals | — | — | — | — | — | 400 | 500 | 1500* |
* The ATP Finals are a round robin among 8 players, not a knockout draw: 1500 is the theoretical maximum total (group-stage points + semifinal + final), not the points for a single round. The WTA follows the same logic — Slams worth the most, points roughly halving each category down — but with its own official table, slightly different in the middle rounds.
Try it — ATP points calculator
The hidden number
An ATP player can enter thirty or more tournaments a year, but the ranking only counts their best 18 results within the 52-week window — a cap that was 19 until the end of 2025, then lowered by one. For the women's tour, the WTA cap is 16.
Those slots aren't all up for grabs: the four Slams and the eight mandatory Masters 1000s (for the WTA: the Slams plus the four mandatory WTA 1000s) fill the first slots automatically — even if the player didn't play them, in which case that slot counts as zero. Only the remaining slots get filled with the player's best other results: ATP/WTA 500, 250, Challenger.
A player who skips a mandatory event for a valid reason (injury, failure to qualify) isn't penalised twice: the number of "best other results" slots increases by one to compensate. It's a system built to reward players who do well at the tournaments that matter most, not just those who play a lot.
The other ranking
The ranking we've been discussing decides seeding and direct entry into draws: rolling, 52 weeks, always moving. The Race is a completely different table, resetting to zero every January 1st and counting only points earned in the current calendar year — it's what decides who qualifies for the season-ending Finals.
A player can be third in the ranking and tenth in the Race on the same day: one tells the story of the last twelve rolling months, the other tells the story of the current year alone. Two snapshots of the same player, taken with different lenses.
In short
Next time a ranking moves without your favourite player touching a racket, now you know why: somewhere, 52 weeks ago, something was about to expire.