Christian Hansen for The New York Times
For professional tennis players, the coronavirus pandemic has meant canceled tournaments, lost income and frozen rankings, with the men’s and women’s tours putting their systems on hold in mid-March.
Rankings are, in many respects, the coin of the tennis realm: the determining factor in players’ ability to enter events, receive seedings and even earn certain bonuses from sponsors.
And the hiatus has created a new mathematical challenge for this global sport. As the tours prepare to resume in August, what is the best way to thaw the rankings that usually shift week by week?