YEAR	Best	GB No 1	Top 10	Top 50	Top 100	Top 200	Top 500
1995	37	Greg Rusedski		1	2	7	16
1996	29	Tim Henman		2	2	3	13
1997	6	Greg Rusedski	1	2	2	5	12
1998	7	Tim Henman	2	2	2	3	11
1999	12	Tim Henman		2	2	3	12
2000	10	Tim Henman		1	2	6	10
2001	9	Tim Henman	1	2	2	4	11
2002	8	Tim Henman	1	2	2	3	11
2003	15	Tim Henman		1	1	3	10
2004	6	Tim Henman	1	2	2	4	15
2005	36	Tim Henman		2	3	4	18
2006	17	Andy Murray		2	2	4	13
2007	11	Andy Murray		1	1	2	7
BEST	6		2	3	6	12	19
WORST	168					1	7
MEAN	46.5		0.2	1.2	2.0	4.7	12.8

-- Edited by steven at 06:45, 2007-11-19

Very interesting Steven. I hope we will see an improvement in the next couple of years.

I join you in the anti-Castle precautions, can't stand the man.

I had not only not realised Broad was ever no. 1, but not Colin Dowdeswell either. Was Petchey never #1? Or was he just not #1 actually at the year end?

Madeline - Petchey and Bates spent a lot of 1994 within 10 places of each other just inside or just outside the top 100 and Petchey was fleetingly GB no. 1 during April 1994. He was 4 behind Bates later in the year when he (Petchey) reached his career high of 80.

Greg is shown on the ATP history as ahead of both of them for most of 1994 but I'm sure Greg was still playing for Canada at that point.

These make fascinating reading, Steven; thanks very much.
Two immediate thoughts strike: the world was a much smaller place in the early 70s than now, in the sense that access to tournament tennis was, with the odd exception, restricted to western Europe, the US and the 'old' Commonwealth, whereas now we have large numbers of high-quality players from, as you say yourself, Serbia, plus the rest of eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, and especially, South America. We have only to look at the experience of other sports; in 1970, I was overcome with emotion in Edinburgh's Meadowbank Stadium watching Kip Keino, of Kenya, winning black Africa's first-ever track gold medal in the Commonwealth Games 1500m. And now? It's a rare occurrence to see a non-black African in a long-distance final in a major games. The last swimming world championships saw medals for Papua New Guinea and north African countries. We saw Kenya beat England in one of the Rugby World Sevens series last season (and didn't we Scots enjoy that!! My apologies to all you English folk). As the world gradually becomes more affluent, and more people get the opportunity to make use of their natural talent, so the share of the top places occupied by the 'old' world will inevitably diminish, and quite rightly, too, hard though that is for UK sports-lovers like us to take. The UK represents, what, 1% of the earth's population, so, eventually, having 5 men in the top 500 would be par for the course - not that we should settle for 'par the course!', though.
The second thought comes from studying your graph: the 'top 500' line is really the key, for having a Henman, a Rusedski or a Murray is very much a matter of chance, an aberration, almost. That line shows, with the exception of three spikes in the mid-90s, and another three in '04, '05 and '06, a clear gradual trend downwards. It's not that this year is an especially poor one, but that it fits the trend, which the past three years have bucked.
I realise that this all seems pessimistic, but perhaps we should be more realistic and accept that the like of this present year is what we should expect, then celebrating the 'better' years when they come along - like next year, he says optomistically!

Steven,

I hope you dont mind but I have copied your excellent table into an email to the LTA....just for info !!

Well done !!

Drew - that's fine (though I wouldn't mind seeing exactly what you sent if you're happy to pm it to me - just so I know how much trouble I might be in!), though you'd think they'd have this kind of info themselves.

Akhenaten - judging from the results on ITF, Neil Broad was competing for RSA at Wimbledon in 1988 but had switched to GBR by the time Johannesburg came around in November 1988, so he was technically British at the end of 1988, if only just! Odd how he played his last tournament as a South African over here and his first as a Brit over there ...

DJ - glad you found it interesting. Of course, you're right, far fewer people played top level tennis in the early 1970s - in fact only 235 players were ranked at all in 1973, probably because there was only a main tour, no Challengers and definitely no Futures or Satellites. It took until the late 1970s before the top 500 actually included 500 players.

One thing you'll be amazed to learn though (I certainly was!) is that there are currently 26 countries represented by at least one player in the top 100. Back in 1973 the corresponding figure was ... 26 too! I imagine less countries had strength in depth in those days, though that's not really borne out by the stats either - 15 of the 26 countries had more than one player in the top 100 back then, today 17 have.

I take your point about there being a general drift downwards, which is no doubt inevitable, and 2005 being the exception rather than the rule, but there are still plenty of countries that hardly have any tennis players and British tennis has a LOT more than 1% of the total money that goes into tennis, so I think we should be aiming quite a lot higher than 1%!

-- Edited by steven at 17:02, 2007-11-19