Tennis talks about players “defending” points, as if the points from last year’s tournament stay on the board until that tournament is played again. Under the ATP’s rules they do not. Ranking points are tied to the calendar, not to the event: they leave a player’s total 52 weeks after they entered it, wherever the tournament has moved in the meantime. Most weeks the two line up and nobody notices. This autumn they do not, because the Rolex Paris Masters is a week later than it was in 2025.
The rule
The 2026 ATP Official Rulebook sets the ranking period in one sentence: “The PIF ATP Rankings or PIF ATP Doubles Rankings period is the immediate past 52 weeks.” It lists two exceptions. The Nitto ATP Finals are “dropped on the Monday following the last ATP Tour event of the following year,” and ITF tournaments are “only entered into the system on the second Monday following the tournament’s week.” It then adds: “Once entered, all tournaments, except for the Nitto ATP Finals, remain in the system for 52 consecutive weeks.”
So a tour-level result goes into the ranking on the Monday after the tournament week and comes out on the Monday 52 weeks later. Nothing in the rule refers to the next edition of the same event.
Why it usually looks like defending
When a tournament keeps its place in the calendar, last year’s points come out on the same Monday that this year’s points go in, the day after the final. A champion who wins again swaps one title for another. A champion who loses early swaps his title points for a smaller result. That is what “defending” describes, and it only works because the dates match.
The weekly mechanics are covered in GTN’s ATP live rankings explainer. Two details matter here. The live rankings reset each Sunday night and remove the points each player earned in that coming week 52 weeks earlier. And if a player has a result outside his counting breakdown worth more than zero, his best such result moves in to replace what drops, so he does not always lose the full amount.
What happens when the calendar moves
The 2025 Paris Masters final was played on Sunday 2 November 2025, so its points entered the ranking on 3 November 2025. Fifty-two weeks later is Monday 2 November 2026. That is the day the 2026 main draw begins, not the day after its final. The 2026 points will not enter until 9 November.
The effect is that the 2025 Paris points are already gone when the 2026 tournament starts. In the live rankings they came off at the Sunday reset before this week’s events in Basel and Vienna, which sit in the same calendar week Paris occupied a year ago. Players reach Paris with nothing from Paris to defend. What they risk during Paris week is whatever they earned in the week that followed it in 2025.
For the 2025 champion, Jannik Sinner, it means the 1,000 points from that title come out of his ranking on 2 November. He cannot replace them in Paris because his season is over. For a player who skips a week that has shifted, the same rule cuts the other way: the points from the shifted event leave on their date whether he plays or not.
The Turin exception
The Nitto ATP Finals are the one tour-level event that does not follow the 52-week clock. Their points stay on until the Monday after the last ATP Tour event of the following year, which keeps a Finals result in the ranking through the whole of the next regular season. The year-end ranking, the rulebook says, is the one “published on the Monday following the Nitto ATP Finals.” How that list relates to the Race is covered in GTN’s ATP year-end No. 1 explainer.
The Race works differently
None of this applies to the Live Race To Turin. The Race counts only the current calendar year, so nothing drops out of it during the season. A calendar shift changes a player’s 52-week ranking, and with it his entry and seeding, but not his place in the Race. See how the ATP Race works and the full points system in GTN’s ATP rankings explainer.
Season Snapshot (as of 29 October 2026)
Alexander Zverev is world No. 2 and has already secured the year-end No. 1 ranking. If he reaches the quarterfinals at the Erste Bank Open in Vienna this week, he is guaranteed to become world No. 1 for the first time on 2 November, overtaking Sinner. He plays Tallon Griekspoor in the second round on Thursday, after saving four match points against Martin Landaluce. The Paris Masters main draw runs from 2 to 8 November.
This snapshot is dated and will change. The rules above do not.
