I built a men's Tennis stats website focused on a new scoring system that adjusts for draw quality and perfomance dominance.
I've been working on this for a while: alltimetennis.com, an all-time career ranking for men's tennis built around a custom scoring formula rather than summed ATP points.
Posting here because the methodology is the interesting part, not just the output.
For the Front End side I used Claude AI to help me structure this beta version of the website, since I'm more a backend engineer and not a web developer.
The core problem with ATP points as a career metric
- The ATP point system has changed multiple times since the 90s — summing across eras creates era noise unrelated to performance
- It resets every 52 weeks by design — it was never built for career comparison
- Volume bias: more tournaments entered and more points accumulated, regardless of depth of runs
The formula
Career Score = Prestige Points × SPS_cumulative × Set_Multiplier_avg
Three components:
Prestige Points — fixed weights per tournament tier and round, independent of ATP's official values and never adjusted between seasons. Grand Slam win = 2,000. Masters win = 1,000. Era-stable by construction.
Minimum thresholds apply: R16 for Slams and Masters 1000s, SF for ATP 500s, F for ATP 250s. Results below threshold don't score.
SPS (Seed Presence Score) — draw quality multiplier, calculated per round per opponent using a continuous logarithmic formula (I'll explain in detail elsewhere). Surviving deeper into a draw is penalized less since the field has already been filtered. SPS_cumulative = average of sps_round across all matches won on the path. The exit match is excluded for non-winners (if you lose the final) , that match doesn't inflate your draw quality score.
Set Multiplier — measures match dominance independently of opponent quality. Applied per round and averaged across the path.
Worked example — Sinner, US Open 2025 finalist
Matches won: R32, R16, QF, SF (final excluded, lost it)
SPS per round: 0.6426, 0.6332, 0.7092,W 0.6650
SPS_cumulative = 0.6625
Score = 1,200 (Slam final Prestige) × 0.6625 = 795
The atp assigned points per round represent the ceiling score.
Scope
- Men's singles, 1990–present (pre-1990: inconsistent data, different tour structure)
- Grand Slams, Masters 1000, ATP 500, ATP 250, ATP Finals
- Pre-2000: SPS defaults to 0.80 — opponent ranking granularity insufficient before that year
- Team events excluded (Davis Cup, Laver Cup, United Cup)
What's live and what's coming
Beta is live at alltimetennis.com Rankings update weekly. In the pipeline: player profile pages with SPS distribution, comparison tool, tournament explorer.
If you spot a methodological issue I haven't accounted for, genuinely interested in the feedback, that's exactly why I'm posting here.
Also I'm warmly open to collaborators (developer or sports content/marketing background) if anyone finds the project interesting.