REUTERS: US Open finalist Alexander Zverev says it’s “absurd” that he stays behind Roger Federer within the revised ATP Tour rating system throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, provided that the Swiss was injured for over a 12 months.

The ATP, which runs the boys’s tour, froze the rankings final 12 months throughout the five-month shutdown {of professional} tournaments with international locations imposing border locks and seals to confirm the unfold of the brand new coronavirus.

When the tour restarted in August, a revised system was put in place to calculate rankings, which decide the flexibility of gamers to take part in occasions and obtain rankings.

“The rating would not actually matter, particularly with the system we’ve got now,” Zverev, seventh, advised reporters forward of this week’s ATP 500 match in Acapulco, Mexico.

“I must be within the high 4, the highest 5 on this planet proper now within the regular rating system. However the rating system we’ve got now’s a bit absurd.”

Federer, who solely returned to the Doha tour final week, has been an enormous beneficiary of the brand new system with the 20-time Grand Slam winner positioned sixth regardless of a protracted break on account of double knee surgical procedures final 12 months .

“I am Roger Federer’s greatest fan however he hasn’t performed for a 12 months and he is forward of me within the standings,” mentioned Zverev, 23. “I performed a Grand Slam ultimate, a Masters 1000 ultimate, gained two tournaments.

“Proper now the submitting system is so messy that you do not want to concentrate to it.”

Leaderboards historically function on the premise of the “finest 18” outcomes over 52 weeks, however the system has been modified to cowl a 22-month interval from March 2019 to December 2020 to permit gamers to skip occasions within the midst of the pandemic.

The revised rankings calculation system has been prolonged this month to the week of August 9, and ATP predicts that the standard course of with factors dropping on a 52-week foundation will restart thereafter.

(Reporting by Sudipto Ganguly in Mumbai; modifying by Peter Rutherford)