How the rankings work, as each tour and body explains it.

A ranking is a tour's or a body's own system, and each one is described here in its owner's terms. No ranking positions or season leaders are given: seasons still running on 26 October 2026 have no champions on this site.

Tennis

ATP (men)

• The ATP describes its ranking as an objective way to decide entry to events and seeding.
• It is a rolling 52-week system.
• Since 2000 it has counted results from 18 events for most players: all the majors and ATP Masters 1000 events, plus a player's best other results.
• The first computer ranking was issued on 23 August 1973, and Ilie Nastase was the first No. 1 (ATP, 23 August 2023).

WTA (women)

The WTA says its computer ranking era began in 1974 and that Chris Evert became the first official No. 1 on 3 November 1975. The WTA's current counting rule, meaning how many tournaments count and what minimums apply, was not found on a WTA page for this site.

Pickleball

PPA Tour: World Pickleball Rankings

The PPA Tour announced its "World Pickleball Rankings" on 5 August 2026, describing them as one global leaderboard covering every PPA Tour event, in effect from the 2026-27 season opener in Cary, North Carolina, in September 2026. A search summary of the PPA's ranking explainer describes a rolling 52-week ranking that counts a player's best 16 events, with points by tier: Worlds, Slams, Cups, Opens and Challengers. The page itself showed only a teaser when opened, so that method is unconfirmed.

USA Pickleball

The 2026 USA Pickleball rulebook says that a sanctioned tournament lets players obtain a rating on a national or international basis. How those ratings are calculated was not covered in the material read for this site.

Padel

FIP Ranking 2026

The FIP's ranking page says the FIP Ranking 2026, announced with Premier Padel, counts a player's best 22 results from Premier Padel and CUPRA FIP Tour events only, with points set by event category and round reached, defended on a rolling 52-week cycle. The page describes rankings of individual players, not of pairs.

FIP Race Ranking

A separate FIP Race Ranking counts the best 22 results of the 2026 season only. It decides who qualifies for the Premier Padel Finals: the top 16 men and women, with the 2026 Finals scheduled for Barcelona from 7 to 13 December.

In February 2025 the Professional Padel Association, the men's players' association, criticised what it called unclear participation and ranking rules, Padel Alto reported; no FIP or Premier Padel response appeared in the article.

Squash

The PSA's own history dates a squash computer ranking to 1979. Wikipedia's season pages describe PSA World Rankings updated regularly from tour results, with points scaled by tournament tier, and a separate cumulative PSA World Tour standings that decides qualification for the PSA World Tour Finals. The PSA's own ranking rules, such as the ranking period and how many results count, were not found for this site.

Badminton

BWF World Ranking System (GCR Appendix 6)

• Five lists: one each for men's singles, women's singles, men's doubles, women's doubles and mixed doubles (section 1.1).
• Points: players and pairs earn points in graded tournaments, more for higher-level events and for going further (section 1.3).
• Who is ranked: anyone who played at least one graded tournament in the last 52 weeks (section 1.3).
• What counts: with 11 or more tournaments in 52 weeks, only the 10 best results count (section 5).
• Once per event: a player or pair scores only once per 52 weeks for the same tournament, keeping the best result (section 7.2).
• Publication: the rankings are published every Thursday (section 3.1).
• Team ranking: a world team ranking of member associations is published quarterly, on the first Thursday of April, July, October and January (sections 1.2 and 8.4).

The copy of Appendix 6 read for this site is undated; an older November 2018 copy hosted by Chile's federation uses the same structure. A search summary of a BWF page says the rankings are used for seeding and for Olympic Games and World Championships qualification; that page was not opened.

Race to Finals

For the BWF World Tour, search summaries of BWF pages say the top eight in each of the five events on the Race to Finals ranking qualify for the World Tour Finals in December. See badminton bodies and tours.