The Most Underrated Tennis Players Right Now, by the Numbers

Grigor Dimitrov is the 137th ranked man in tennis. On grass, our Elo has him 10th. That is a 127-place gap between where the official table files him and where his results say he belongs, and it is the widest gap in the men's game this month.

"Underrated" usually means whatever a columnist wants it to mean. We use one definition and let the data settle it. Take a player's position on our surface Elo leaderboard, subtract it from their official ATP or WTA ranking, and the difference is the gap. A big positive gap means the ranking has a player far lower than their level, because Elo scores who you beat while the ranking scores which rounds you reached over a rolling year. When those two numbers pull apart, the ranking is almost always the one lagging behind.

The most underrated men right now

These are the six largest rank-minus-Elo gaps on the ATP side. The Elo column is each player's rating on the surface where the gap is widest.

The top of this board is three names the ranking files at 133rd, 137th, and 141st, and whose Elo puts each inside the top 15 on his best surface. Dimitrov, Draper, and Rune carry gaps of 127, 126, and 122, so close together that the order could flip next week. Dimitrov's case is the easiest to watch, because you can find him on the grass board itself.

A player sitting 137th in the world does not usually share a grass leaderboard with Novak Djokovic at 1955 and Jannik Sinner at 1916. Dimitrov does, at 1736, because grass Elo counts results and does not care that the ranking has fewer points banked next to his name.

The most underrated women right now

The WTA gaps run much wider, and the top of the list is not close.

Anca Alexia Todoni is the extreme. She is ranked 785th, yet her clay Elo of 2050 puts her 11th on that surface. A 774-place gap is not a rounding error in how the ranking works, it is a player whose points table has almost nothing on it while her results say she can hang with the clay top twenty. Francesca Jones shows the same shape at a smaller scale: ranked 104th, 10th on clay at 2066, a 94-place gap.

Why the gaps open up

The gap is a backlog. Ranking points expire after 52 weeks, so a player who missed months, played a light schedule, or is only now stringing wins together carries a thin points total no matter how well they are hitting. Elo has no calendar. It holds a player's level until they actually lose to someone, then adjusts. That is why the widest gaps cluster among players on the way back up rather than players on the way down.

You can read the same effect the other direction on the full ATP rankings page, where live Elo sits next to official points, and it feeds the calls on today's predictions. For the method behind all of it, see how Elo differs from the ATP ranking.

A big gap is not proof a player is good. It is proof the ranking is behind. Sometimes it catches up over the next month, and sometimes the wins do not come and the gap closes the other way.

Where this misleads

The gap is a starting point, not a verdict. A small sample can inflate an Elo rating, so a player who won a handful of matches against soft opposition can show a gap that will not survive real competition. Grass ratings sit on a lower scale than hard or clay, so a grass gap and a clay gap are not directly comparable. And the number says nothing about form this week, a bad stylistic matchup, or tired legs. Treat a name high on this board as a reason to look closer at a player's profile, not as a finished answer about who wins the next match.

Both boards update as results come in. The ATP and WTA ranking pages show live Elo next to official points for every ranked player.