Top tennis players of '84
About the article
This is a digitised version of an article from The Cayman Compass's print archive. Occasionally, the digitisation process introduces transcription errors, or other problems.
See the article in its original context from December 1984.
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An international panel of seven tennis journalists from six countries was polled for the rankings by Tennis Magazine, which also ranks players according to surface. McEnroe holds the no. 1 spot among men, having won 13 tournaments, including the U.S. Open and Wimbledon. He only lost twice in tournament play, falling to Ivan Lendl in the French Open final and to Vijay Amritraj in the first round of the ATP Championships.
Lendl, ranked no. 3 last year, moves up to no. 2, dropping Jimmy Connors to no. 3. The remainder of the top 10 is dominated by Swedes, led by Mats Wilander, the two-time Australian Open champion, at no. 4. Henrik Sundstrom, Anders Jarryd and Joakim Nystrom are ranked sixth, seventh and ninth, respectively.
Making the men's top 10 for the first time are no. 5 Andres Gomez of Ecuador, no. 8 Pat Cash of Australia and no. 10 Aaron Krickstein, of the United States as the 17-year-old "Rookie of the Year." Navratilova, winner of three Grand Slam events in 1984, is ranked no. 1 among the women by Tennis Magazine for the third straight year. She suffered losses only in her first and last tournaments of the year, falling to Hana Mandlikova of Czechoslovakia in the final of the Virginia Slims of California and to Helena Sukova in the semifinals of the Australian Open.
Chris Evert Lloyd, the Australian Open champion, maintained the no. 2 ranking, followed by Mandlikova; Pam Shriver of the United States, and Manuela Maleeva of Bulgaria.
Rounding out the top 10 are Sukova of Czechoslovakia; Kathy Jordan of the United States; Wendy Turnbull of Australia; Carling Bassett of Canada and Zina Garrison of the United States.
New to the women's top 10 are Maleeva, Sukova, Bassett and Garrison.
In the surface rankings, McEnroe was chosen no. 1 on grass, indoor and hard courts, but ranked no. 2 on clay behind Lendl. Lendl is ranked no. 3 on grass, indoor and hard courts, and no. 4 on grass. Connors is ranked no. 2 on grass, indoor and hardcourt surfaces, but is not among the top five on clay.
Navratilova and Lloyd are ranked 1-2 on all four surfaces.
