Rafael Nadal will be ranked No. 1 on Monday, August 21st in the ATP's tennis rankings. The date will also mark the end of Andy Murray's run as the top-ranked player, at least for the time being. Murray was ranked as the top player for 41 weeks, and that's good enough for 14th all time even if he doesn't add any more weeks, and he's currently two shy of Gustavo Kuerten for 13th spot. But Nadal has 100 more weeks at the top compared to Murray. The Spaniard overtaking top spot is relevant toward the higher end of the all-time list. Nadal is currently 7th all-time for weeks spent as the No.
1 player. With an extended stay he could pass John Mcenroe.
McEnroe, whose career is central to an upcoming Hollywood film, spent 170 weeks as the No. 1 player in the world for men's tennis. That's 28 more weeks than what Nadal will have when Monday's rankings update. While adding 28 weeks to tie McEnroe would require that Nadal add 6-7 months as the top-ranked player in the world, it certainly is not beyond the Spaniard's abilities. He will have the ranking points from his 2017 French Open title and his clay-court Masters Series titles banked for quite some time. Furthermore, the ranking points for his runnerup finish at the Australian Open will remain banked for a while.
Finishing year ranked No. 1 is key
It's important to note that finishing the year ranked No. 1 would add a lot of weeks to Nadal's total. The season ends in November and there are no tournaments until very early January. If Nadal finishes the year ranked in the top spot it would add more than a handful of weeks to his total during the offseason alone.
If he is able to hang on to top spot from now until the end of the tour finals in London, then Nadal would add 18 weeks to his current total. that would place him in reasonable proximity to McEnroe on the all-time list heading into the 2018 season,
The task of staying ranked No. 1 will almost surely require that Nadal perform well on the hard-court surface events to be played for the balance of the season.
Certainly, Alexander Zverev has announced himself as relevant on the surface following titles in both Washington and Montreal. Meanwhile, both Grigor Dimitrov and Nick Kyrgios might be able to take away a lot of ranking points from the balance of the season. Nadal does not have a ton of ranking points at this stage, at least not for a World No. 1 player. There are still enough big tournaments in the months ahead that the race for the year-end World No. 1 ranking is in fact on with Roger Federer in the mix as well.
Next week's World No. 1 Rafael Nadal has played 34 hard-court tournaments since last title on the surface (2014 Doha: Nadal d. Gael Monfils)
— ATP Media Info (@ATPMediaInfo) August 19, 2017
Federer's record out of reach at present
Currently, Federer holds the record for most weeks as the top-ranked player in the world at 302.
In order for Nadal to challenge that he would need to spend roughly three additional years as the No. 1 player on tour. If Novak Djokovic returned to tour healthy and playing like he can, then he is the one that might challenge this record. Currently, the Serb is sidelined with a long-term injury, but he has 223 weeks banked as the top player already.
