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Leander is ATP's player of the week

The latest singles rankings, released by ATP on Monday, has India's Leander Paes at 129, his lowest ranking in over a year.

He was down at 161 in April '98, and it took him just four months to move up to 73. Since then, he has been hovering around the 100-mark. It is a facet of Leander's career in singles that his progress on the ATP list has been something of a one-step-down-4-steps-up affair.

Leander started this year with a 91 ranking, moving up to 81 on February 22. That represented his highest ranking this year. Since then, he has not been able to keep up with his singles play, and last week saw him hit a new low when he failed to defend the 151 points he had won last year at the Newport Hall of Fame event. And this has triggered his latest slump.

Leander's doubles partner Mahesh Bhupathi meanwhile is at 261, up 2 spots, followed by Prahlad Srinath at 330 (down 2 spots), Syed Fazaluddin at 419, down 10 spots and Harsh Mankad at 596, retaining his position.

Interestingly, Leander still keeps his No 1 Asian ranking as Takao Suzuki of Japan, who has been having a terrible time in the last few months, has dropped about 25 spots this week to touch 145 on the overall rankings. Suzuki was unable to defend his challenger title at Denver.

Singles Rankings for top 5 Indians as of July 12, 1999

Rank	Player	Last Week's Ranking	Total Points	Tournament Points	Bonus Points	Tournaments Played
129	Leander Paes	102	364	279	85	17
261	Mahesh Bhupathi	263	152	143	9	12
330	Prahlad Srinath	328	110	110	0	8
419	Syed Fazaluddin	409	73	73	0	12
596	Harsh Mankad	596	32	32	0	5

In the doubles individual rankings, Nitin and Sandeep Kirtane are at 310 and 318 respectively, followed by Syed Fazaluddin at 358 (up about 40 spots thanks to his semifinal appearence at the Bristol challenger last week) and Harsh Mankad at 559.

In terms of career money earnings, Leander has crossed the $2 million mark whereas Mahesh is at $1.4 million. Ramesh Krishnan is third, in the all time list of Indians, at $959,479.

Indian Top 5 Career Individual Prize Money Rankings as of July 12, 1999

Rank	Player	Prize Money
1	Leander Paes	$2,036,969
2	Mahesh Bhupathi	$2,036,969
3	Ramesh Krishnan	$959,479
4	Vijay Amritraj	$180,604
5	Srinivasan Vasudevan	$66,359

Statistically, Leander and Mahesh's performances in the tournament finals are very interesting. They have won 15 of the 19 finals they have played in (not including challengers).

The only losses were to Rich Leach/Jonathan Stark in the finals of the '97 World Doubles Championships at Hartford, to the Woodies at the '98 Singapore Heineken Open final (a week after beating them in the Shanghai final), to Lareau/O'Brien in the '98 Stuttgart Super 9 final (after having beaten them in the Montreal Super 9 and the PilotPen Open finals in '97) and to Bjorkman/Rafter at the Australian Open final this year.

Including the '98 Newport singles final, the Mixed Doubles final at Wimbledon and last week's Newport doubles final, Leander now has an incredible 18-4 record in finals play in doubles.

Mahesh in 1997 had the Infiniti Open final loss in Rick Leach's company and the Wimbledon Mixed Doubles final loss last year. With the 1997 French Open Mixed Doubles final, his record is a stellar 16-6.

If one adds the three challenger finals Leander won (Bangkok in 1998, Calcutta and Delhi in 1999), then, starting from January 1997, Leander has a 21-4 record in all the finals he has played. Which, by any yardstick, is a remarkable run.

Mahesh has lost three challenger singles finals since 1997 out of which two were to Leander (Kyoto 1997, and Calcutta and Delhi this year). He has won a challenger doubles final with Peter Tramacchi (Vietnam 1998) and lost one with Natekar (1999 Mumbai). His total record since 1997 stands at 17-10.

Numbers that speak of a superb run by 'Indian Express' till date. And in recognition, the ATP hierarchy has named Leander Paes the 'Player of the Week' at the official website.

On the women's side Nirupama Vaidyanathan is at 191 (1 spot up) in singles and 207 in doubles, though she will lose some points next week (14 in singles and 10 in doubles) for the Pucheim challenger in Germany from last year, which she is not defending this time round. This means that when the next rankings list is released, she will drop 15 spots or so in singles and a few spots in doubles.

Manisha Malhotra is at 387 (4 spots up ), Sai Jayalakshmy is at 452 (up 4 spots) and Rushmi Chakravarti at 674 (up 16 spots).