Serbia’s Novak Djokovic will finish the 2011 as world number one, making him the 16th player to do so in the history of ATP World Rankings (which started in 1973).
This development came about after world no. 2 Rafael Nadal of Spain lost in the third round of the Shanghai Rolex Masters this week. This means that Djokovic have enough points to remain at the top until the end of the season.
The 24-year old Belgrade native continued the streak of Europeans occupying the top spot for the past eight year. Roger Federer of Switzerland was the year-end number one from 2004 t0 2007 and 2009 while Nadal was top-ranked on 2008 and 2010.
Djokovic will be officially crowned as year-end number one at the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals where he qualified for the fifth straight year.
To date this season, Djokovic compiled a 64-3 win-loss record. He won three of the four Grand Slam singles titles in 2011 (Australian Open, Wimbledon, US Open). He reached the semifinals of the Roland Garros tournament. He won five ATP World Tour Masters titles (Indian Wells, Miami, Madrid, Rome and Montreal).
List of ATP World Tour Year-end number one players since 1973
