We noted a couple of weeks ago that the retirement through injury of Finland's tennis No.1 Jarkko Nieminen in his first-round match at the Australian Open would prove costly, and on Monday the new ATP rankings showed just how expensive it was.
Nieminen slid all of 22 places in the rankings, from 38th to 60th.
The reason for the hefty drop was that this time last year he made the quarter-finals of the same tournament, and the 500 ranking points gained for that now disappeared from his balance, to be replaced by a meagre 10 points for a first-round defeat.
In practical terms, Nieminen's exit from the top 40 or so players will oblige him to lower his sights somewhat and enter tournaments of a slightly lower standing if he wants to start climbing the ladder again.
With such a low ranking, he would not be seeded in the bigger ATP tournaments and so would run the risk of facing one of the world's top players in the opening rounds.
Nieminen's highest-ever ranking was 13th in July 2006.
He will be playing next in the SAP Open in San Jose, California, starting next week.
