It looks like France are going to rush past Spain - all their top players are in Monte Carlo this week and thanks to a large drop for Garcia-Lopez to around 114 in live rankings, then Spain will drop to below an average of 40 with France moving ahead at around 39 average ranking. So France will be the strongest nation in mens tennis at pretty much every ranking point by next Monday.

Interestingly, Spain will also have just 9 men in the top 100, same as USA come next Monday, 24th April. France will have 10 players. France also have 11th and 12th players at 106 and 111 respectively in live running, Spain have 11th and 12th players at 123 and 134. I suspect once France get in front next week, they will stay their for a while. Given it is the French Presidential election this weekend, it seems somehow appropriate that they will move to #1 at the same time.

Wonder where GB will be placed around June 8th??

One of the more striking features is the extent to which the US men trail the US women, who are completely dominant.

I'd guess this is partly due to male US jocks having very good lucrative opportunities/scholarships in other sports such as basketball and their football; partly because of the points allocation for ITF women's tournaments, with 15ks awarding only a quarter of 25k points, which means that the higher money ITF tournaments put on by the USTA give their women the opportunity to fly up the rankings, past their European counterparts who can expect to be stuck in 15ks for several years.

wimdledont wrote:

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I found an old out-of-date list of countries ranked by the aggreagte points scores of their top tens, here...

tennisgrrrl.com/countryrankings.shtml

...since when, GB have improved considerably. By my sketchy maths, we have increased out total from 4398 to 6710; position 13 on the list.

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 Thanks wimbledont, the link doesnt work for me though unfortunately. Good to see doing it that way shows in the same position as average rank of top ten.

As an aside, looks like France should ascend to top spot in the mens today, will wait for ABB to officially confirm!

Thanks ABB - not much to say really, France jump into top spot in the mens!However, for average rankings below top 10 (ie top 9, top 8 etc) Spain would hold the spot, for everything at 10 and above it is France. Which suggests that France now have the strength in depth more than any other country, whereas they still lack those one or two top end star players to dominate at the very top of the game.

One change though of interest was South Africa moving through and improving their average from nearly 1200 to around 1000, a massive single week improvement, not sure quite on the detail of how and why, but quite a dramatic move.

Thanks guys. Next week not looking too hot for our men or women's average. But that tale will be told in time.

I've done the ATP.
The WTA website is completely borked, and the rankings aren't available yet.

Here's the blurb I wrote for the ATP side though.

ATP
France hold off Spain at the top, and the gap in the averages is now fully 4.4 points. 40 vs. 44.
This means that France & Spain are both weakening compared to the start of the year, when they were 35 & 32 avg ranking, respectively.

GB... you guessed it, still 13th.
But, average ranking crashes from 207 to 213, though this is still up from the start of the year, when it was 218.
This is despite Aljaz's amazing form and rise.
Blame Liam, as he plummets 70 places in the week.

Updated: https://public.tableau.com/views/20170501ATPWTACountryStrengths/ATPCountryRankings?:embed=y&:display_count=yes

ATP (See above)

WTA
Quiet at the top.

Significant Falls from Laura R, And Katie's B & S see GB fall a place as avg ranking also tumbles.
We slide to #15 at avg. rank 214, down from 209 last week. This more or less returns us to where we were at the start of the year.
When you take performance of all ranked players into account, GB have fallen steadily further & further behind the median for ranked players and the average ranking of those ranked players. That trend is even more pronounced measured against countries of broadly similar population and economic status - we are a long way behind 'in real terms'.