Triste, solitario y el número uno

By Andrea Scaglione

The Grey Zone of Sporting History

The history of professional sport is often perceived as a linear sequence of results, an unchanging archive in which wins and losses are crystallised into definitive statistics. In tennis, however, the advent of the Open Era and the subsequent computerisation of the rankings created a shadow zone between greatness as seen on court and its bureaucratic certification. At the centre of one of the most complex and long running controversies in the history of the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) stands Guillermo Vilas, the legendary Argentine player who, despite dominating the international circuit in the mid 70s, never obtained official recognition as world No.1.

This article aims to examine, with rigour and analytical depth, the research carried out by Argentine journalist Eduardo Puppo, given the many misunderstandings, especially among fans. That investigation, which lasted more than twelve years and is known as “Project V”, highlighted discrepancies in the available data, documentary gaps and operational choices at the time that prevented Vilas from appearing at the top in the official publications.

By studying the calculation mechanisms of the period, the mathematical reconstruction carried out by mathematician Marian Ciulpan and the comparison with historical precedents such as Evonne Goolagong, this piece explores how an imperfect ranking system and rigid institutional management created a historical paradox: an athlete who mathematically occupied the top position, yet whom the official record continues to consign to second place.

The analysis is not limited to sporting bookkeeping; it is an exploration of the governance of sporting institutions, the ethics of record keeping and the human weight that such recognition carries. In recent years, various media outlets have described a worsening of his cognitive condition, without any officially shared diagnosis in the public debate, and, as Mats Wilander also maintains in his latest statements, he nevertheless fought this battle not for financial claims, but for the identity of his professional legacy.

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Part I: Origins and Architecture of the ATP Ranking (1973 to 1979)

The Transition towards Objectivity

To fully understand the dispute surrounding Guillermo Vilas, it is essential to place the ranking system in force in the 1970s in context, a period of turbulent transition for world tennis. Before 23 August 1973, tennis did not have an objective computerised ranking. World hierarchies were established by influential journalists (such as Lance Tingay of the Daily Telegraph), national federations and tournament committees, based on subjective criteria, prior reputation or qualitative assessments of performance.

The introduction of a computerised ranking by the ATP was a necessary revolution in the professionalisation of the sport. The primary objective was not, paradoxically, to establish who was “the best” in an absolute sense, but to create an objective criterion for acceptance into tournament draws (the entry system) and for the assignment of seeds, eliminating the favouritism that had characterised the amateur era and the early years of the Open Era. According to the ATP’s historical reconstructions, the development of the ranking was entrusted to TRW Inc., an aerospace company, which processed the data on huge paper printouts.

The average based ranking: an imperfect system

The calculation system used by the ATP in 1975 differed radically from today’s additive system (“Best of 19”). At the time, the ranking was based on a weighted average of points earned. This technical detail is the key to understanding why Vilas, despite winning so much, struggled to overtake Jimmy Connors in the official printouts.

The basic 1975 ranking formula was:

Ranking score = Total points accumulated (last 52 weeks) / Number of tournaments played (divisor)

In the early versions of the average based system there was a minimum divisor (often indicated as 12 tournaments) and the mechanism tended to penalise very heavy schedules, even when they were rich in wins.

Breakdown of the points components

Points were assigned on the basis of three main factors:

• Prize money and draw size: tournaments were classified (for example through a star system or prize money categories) and the points per round varied accordingly.
• Round reached: progressive points for quarter finals, semi finals, finals and the title.
• Bonus points: a critical and often overlooked component. Players received extra points for defeating highly ranked opponents (for example Top 24, Top 150, or seeded players). Beating a No. 1 was worth more bonus points than beating a No. 50.

The “workhorse penalty” paradox

The average algorithm created a statistical distortion known as the “workhorse penalty”, or frequency penalty. Players like Guillermo Vilas, known for a relentless work ethic and a willingness to play an exceptionally high number of tournaments (often on clay, a physically demanding surface), were disadvantaged compared with players who carefully selected their schedules.

The punitive mechanism worked as follows: if a player had a very high points average (thanks, for example, to winning a Slam), entering a smaller event became a mathematical risk. Even by winning that smaller event, if the points earned (title plus bonuses) were lower than the player’s current average, the overall average would fall. Guillermo Vilas, who in 1977 won 16 titles and played dozens of events, saw his average diluted by these “minor” victories. By contrast, Jimmy Connors, adopting a more selective programme aimed at the big events on hard courts and indoors (which often offered higher prize money and bigger bonuses), managed to keep a lower divisor and therefore a higher average, despite winning fewer titles overall.

Irregular publication

The second pillar of the controversy is not the algorithm itself, but the frequency with which the rankings were published. In the 1970s the ATP did not update the rankings weekly as it does today. The technological and logistical limitations of the time made data processing slow and expensive.

Historical data show an irregular publication frequency, roughly:

• 1974: 11 rankings published.
• 1975: 13 rankings published.
• 1976: 23 rankings published.

Between one official publication and the next, several weeks could pass, sometimes more than a month. During these “dark intervals” (gap weeks), tournaments continued to be played, points continued to be earned and to expire (rolling 52 weeks), but the official ranking remained “frozen” at the last available printout. Eduardo Puppo’s core thesis is that, had the computer processed the data in those dark weeks, Guillermo Vilas would have appeared as world No. 1.

Part II: The “Project V” investigation, methodology and findings

The origins of the research

The investigation, which took on the contours of an existential mission for journalist Eduardo Puppo, formally began in 2007, inspired by the case of Australian player Evonne Goolagong Cawley (discussed in depth in Part IV). Puppo, author of the monumental tetralogy Historia del Tenis en la Argentina, sensed that anomalies in the publication system of the 1970s could conceal an untold statistical truth about Vilas.

Puppo’s motivation was not merely nationalistic, but historiographical: to correct an inconsistency in the records that saw the most dominant player of an era (Vilas in 1977), or the most consistent player in certain periods of 1975, permanently relegated to second place.

Methodology: forensic reconstruction of the data

Puppo’s work, carried out with Romanian mathematician and programmer Marian Ciulpan, is a unique case in the history of sports statistics for its depth and complexity. The approach was not limited to a superficial review, but involved a complete reconstruction of the tennis circuit of the 1970s.

Phase 1: Data archaeology

The team had to recover the results of every single match played on the professional circuit between 1973 and 1978. This included:

• Grand Prix tournament draws.
• Events from the WCT circuit (World Championship Tennis).
• Minor events, qualifiers and Challenger level tournaments, many of which had not been properly digitised by the ATP, or whose records had been lost.

In total, 22,545 results relating to 542 tournaments were processed and more than 1,200 pages of documentary evidence and spreadsheets were compiled.

Phase 2: reverse engineering the algorithm

Ciulpan had to decode the exact algorithm used by the ATP in 1975, which was not transparent in the way today’s is. The greatest difficulty lay in calculating bonus points. Because bonuses depended on an opponent’s ranking at the time of the match, Puppo and Ciulpan had to reconstruct the weekly ranking of all players on the circuit, not only Vilas and Connors, in order to assign bonus points correctly for every single match.

Phase 3: weekly recalculation

Once the complete database had been created and the algorithm decoded, the team simulated the publication of the ranking for every single week in the period examined. It is essential to stress that Puppo did not apply modern rules to the past. He did not attempt to use a “best of” system or to change the criteria for points allocation. He rigorously applied the 1975 rules (the average based system) to the weeks in which the ATP had not published the ranking.

The results: the 7 weeks at No. 1

The data processing produced an unequivocal result: under the rules in force at the time and using complete tournament results, Guillermo Vilas was mathematically world No. 1 for a total of 7 weeks.

Those weeks fall into two precise windows of time, during which Vilas’s points average surpassed Jimmy Connors’s.

Puppo’s analysis shows that Vilas’s absence from No. 1 was not due to a lack of results on court, but to an administrative shortcoming in the frequency of computer updates. If the computer had been programmed to print every Monday, Vilas would have received recognition in real time.

Part III: The 1977 paradox and the crucial distinction

A key point, often misunderstood by the public and generalist media, is the distinction between the technical claim relating to 1975 and 1976 and the moral perception relating to 1977.

1977: the record year

1977 is universally recognised as the magnum opus of Vilas’s career. His statistics that season are staggering and remain unmatched in the Open Era:

• Titles won: 16 ATP titles (an all time record).
• Wins: 134.
• Grand Slams: Roland Garros and the US Open (played on the green clay at Forest Hills).
• Winning streak: 53 consecutive wins on clay, Vilas in a single official season, Nadal reaches 81 across three seasons (an indirect comparison across eras)

Despite this overwhelming dominance, Vilas finished the year ranked No. 2, behind Jimmy Connors. In 1977 Connors won the Masters and seven other titles, but no Grand Slam (he lost the Wimbledon and US Open finals to Borg and Vilas respectively).

Why did Connors remain No. 1 in 1977?

The answer lies entirely in the distortion of the “average based system” described in Part I.

Vilas, in a state of competitive trance, played everywhere. He won smaller tournaments in Springfield, Virginia Beach and Buenos Aires. Every win in a smaller tournament added points to the total, but increased the divisor. Because the points from a smaller event were lower than the stellar average Vilas already had (thanks to the Slams), each win in what would now be an ATP 250 paradoxically lowered his points average.

Connors played a reduced schedule, competing almost exclusively in events with high prize money and prestigious draws. He lost fewer “unnecessary” matches and kept a low divisor.

Eduardo Puppo, with intellectual honesty, acknowledges that under the mathematical rules of the time Connors was legitimately No. 1 at the end of 1977. “Project V” does not ask for Vilas to be awarded year end No. 1 for 1977 (which would be an ex post change of rules), but focuses on the 7 weeks in 1975 and 1976 in which Vilas was No. 1 under the rules then in force, yet was not recognised because the ranking was not published.

Part IV: The Goolagong precedent and sporting case law

The legal and ethical cornerstone of Puppo’s claim lies in the precedent set by the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA).

The Evonne Goolagong case (2007)

In 2007, the WTA announced a historical review of its rankings. An analysis of data from 1976 revealed that Australian player Evonne Goolagong Cawley had overtaken Chris Evert for a period of two weeks (April to May 1976). That overtake had not been recorded at the time because some results had not been correctly transferred into the computers, or had been lost in the paper records prior to entry.

The WTA acted decisively and retroactively:

• It officially recognised Goolagong as the 16th No. 1 in history.
• It presented her with the No. 1 trophy thirty one years after the fact.
• It amended all yearbooks and official records to reflect the two weeks at No. 1.

Comparative analysis: Vilas vs Goolagong

Supporters of Vilas argue that the two cases are legally identical: an administrative error at the time deprived an athlete of their rightful status. The ATP, however, drew a subtle but decisive technical distinction to justify different treatment.

Through the words of former CEO Chris Kermode, the ATP maintains that the Goolagong case involved correcting an incorrect calculation caused by missing data. In the Vilas case, it would involve generating new calculations for weeks the organisation had decided, for technical limits or political choice, to skip. Puppo disputes this, arguing that in 1975 there was a 29 day gap with no publication, between 22 September and 20 October, which becomes one of the central hinges of the dispute.

Part V: The ATP’s historical response and the political implications

Historically, despite the weight of the evidence (more than 1,200 pages and 22,545 results), the ATP has maintained a stance of total closure.

Institutional refusal

The dossier was formally presented to the ATP in 2014. After months of analysis, in May 2015, Chris Kermode communicated the official refusal.

The reasons given are multiple:

• The “floodgates” argument: the ATP fears that accepting a revision for Vilas would create a dangerous precedent. Other players from the 1970s and 1980s could request recalculations for specific unpublished weeks, potentially altering the record for weeks at No. 1 of legends such as Borg, McEnroe or Lendl. This would lead to permanent instability in the honour roll.
• The impossibility of rewriting history: Kermode stated: “We cannot adopt this version of the rankings as official history… rewriting history is impossible”. The argument is that players of the time made decisions (which tournaments to play) based on the rankings that were published then. If Vilas had been No. 1 in one of those dark weeks, perhaps Connors would have played an extra tournament to regain the top spot. Changing the ranking ex post ignores the decision making context of the time.
• The domino effect on draws: if Vilas had been No. 1, seedings for subsequent tournaments would have changed. A No. 1 does not meet the No. 2 until the final. Changing the ranking retroactively would, in theory, invalidate the sporting regularity of tournaments then played with “incorrect” seedings.

One detail is decisive. Faced with the dossier and the week by week reconstruction, the ATP has never produced a public technical refutation of the recalculation. It chose to respond with governance arguments, therefore, if a calculation error exists, it has never shown it. From this point onwards, the issue is not mathematics, but the political decision about what should count as “official history”. According to Puppo, there was no technical objection and the ATP did not present a study to refute the recalculation. Regardless of Puppo’s statements, there is no record of any technical refutation by the ATP regarding the Vilas matter, as we shall see later.

Recent developments (2020 to 2024)

On 23 May 2024, CLAY published an interview with Guillermo Salatino signed by Sebastián Varela. In the text, Salatino states that he spoke about five years earlier with Nicola Arzani, presented in that article as one of the ATP’s vice presidents, and that Arzani told him: “Vilas will never be number one.”

Arzani (Senior Vice President ATP), contacted by us on this point, told us the following:

“The quoted statement attributed to me is not accurate.”

Part VI: Cultural and human impact

The battle for No. 1 has transcended statistics to become a human drama, captured in the documentary “Guillermo Vilas: Settling the Score” (2020).

The decline of a champion

The documentary reveals a harrowing aspect of the story: Vilas’s state of health. The former champion suffers a progressive cognitive decline (Argentine media have spoken of early Alzheimer’s or senile dementia). The scene in which Puppo shows a visibly confused and moved Vilas the papers that prove his primacy has become an iconic moment of catharsis. For Vilas, the claim is not about sponsorships or money, but about validating his memory and identity before they fade completely.

Support from peers

The tennis community has largely sided with the Argentine.

Mats Wilander has stated publicly that the ATP must correct this error, stressing that

“Vilas doesn’t need to be No. 1 to be a legend, but if he was, it must be recognised”.

Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer, while not entering into the technical merits of the legal dispute in the documentary, offered testimony that elevates Vilas’s stature, recognising him as one of the spiritual fathers of modern tennis and topspin.

Boris Becker and Rod Laver have also expressed solidarity, acknowledging the statistical anomaly of a player with four Slams and 62 titles never being ranked at the top.

Mathematical truth vs institutional recognition

The exhaustive analysis carried out by Eduardo Puppo and Marian Ciulpan established an unassailable mathematical truth: by rigorously applying the criteria of the time, Guillermo Vilas occupied the No. 1 position in the ATP ranking for 7 weeks between 1975 and 1976. The absence of this recognition is due solely to the ATP’s decision not to publish the rankings in those specific weeks.

Sport, however, is governed not only by mathematics, but also by politics and bureaucracy. The ATP faces an insoluble dilemma:

• Recognising Vilas would mean admitting that historical data management was flawed, opening the door to potential revisions for dozens of other players and undermining the authority of the honour roll.
• Denying Vilas means perpetuating a proven historical injustice, leaving one of the greatest champions ever to end his days knowing he was the best, but without the world having certified it officially.

At present, “institutional belief” prevails: for the ATP, what was not printed in 1975 does not exist. For sports history, thanks to Puppo’s work, there now exists a parallel “historical truth”. Guillermo Vilas is the “No. 1 for those who know the game” in 1977 for his on court dominance, and the “hidden mathematical No. 1” of 1975 to 1976 for the whims of a computer that did not print the results when it should have.

Nicola Arzani (Senior Vice President ATP) has provided us today with the ATP’s official position:

“To recalculate the rankings on a weekly basis – which was not done for a number of reasons at that time, including the slow flow of information due to technology – some four decades later using the benefit of hindsight is an interesting exercise but should not replace the work done by the Rankings Committee at the time.
To change the Rankings would mean the theoretical necessity of changing seedings at tournaments, which could have then influenced match outcomes and ranking points earned and this is, of course, not possible.
“We respect the work carried out and also greatly respect the outstanding career of Guillermo Vilas.”

Solving the puzzle

It is worth stopping for a moment to reflect. There are two different levels here, which are often confused.

The first is the level of knowledge, what in technical terms is called the epistemic level. In the 1970s, for material and organisational reasons, the system did not produce a continuous weekly ranking and therefore it was not always possible to “know”, with precision week by week, who was truly ahead. From this perspective, it is not a scandal that there was not, at the time, public certainty that Vilas had been, for some weeks, world No. 1. And, in the abstract, it is not even a scandal if today the ATP says: we do not want to rewrite the archival rankings retroactively.

The second level, however, is that of truth and facts, what can technically be called the ontological level: what happened. And here the issue changes. Because today we are no longer in 1975. Today the data have been reconstructed, the calculation has been retraced and the conclusion is known: Vilas was No. 1 for some weeks, whether four, five or seven. At that point, it is not a matter of “rewriting history” but of recognising a fact.

And so the question to the ATP is simple: why not at least say this?

“We are not changing the official tables, we are not claiming to revisit every week, but we officially recognise that in 1975 and 1976 Guillermo Vilas was, for some weeks, the world No. 1.”

Full stop. It would be a minimal formula. It would not destroy any archive and it would not open any administrative apocalypse. It would simply state what is now known.

The total refusal, the absolute closure, as well as being humanly incomprehensible given the broader situation, resembles an absurd line of reasoning: we know dinosaurs existed, we have the evidence, but since we did not see them with our own eyes and we do not know exactly where they grazed, we refuse to admit that they are part of history. That is the figure the ATP is cutting: like a Tyrannosaurus.

And it would take very little to avoid it.

Appendix A: The weeks in which Vilas comes out as No. 1 in the “Project V” recalculation

According to Eduardo Puppo, by applying the ATP ranking rules of the time (the average based system, with a minimum divisor of 12) to the complete reconstructed results, Guillermo Vilas comes out as world No. 1 for 7 weeks: five in 1975 and two in 1976. The values below are the ranking averages (promedio).

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Further Viewing: Guillermo Vilas: Settling the Score (Netflix documentary, 2020)

“A useful primary reference for the Vilas case: it follows Eduardo Puppo’s investigation into the 1970s rankings and frames both the institutional refusal and the human stakes behind Project V.”