What the top 10 in the ATP rankings looked like when Roger Federer won his first Grand Slam title

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The ATP rankings looked a lot different when Roger Federer became a major champion for the first time.

Federer won his first Grand Slam title at Wimbledon in 2003, when he was just 21 years old.

The Swiss went on to win 20 major titles in his decorated career, before Federer retired from tennis in 2022.

Federer went through many eras in his career, which is showcased by how different the top 10 in the ATP rankings looked when he won his first Grand Slam.

The top 10 in the ATP rankings after Roger Federer won Wimbledon in 2003

Federer beat Mark Philippoussis in straight sets to win his first of what turned out to be multiple Grand Slam titles at Wimbledon in 2003.

This enabled Federer to climb to a career-high ranking of world number three, with just Australian Open champion Andre Agassi and French Open Juan Carlos Ferrero ahead of him.

Lleyton Hewitt was the defending Wimbledon champion coming into the 2003 tournament, but after suffering a shock first round defeat the Australian slipped down to world number five.

Carlos Moya was one place ahead of Hewitt in fourth, while Andy Roddick, Guillermo Coria, Rainer Schuettler, Sebastian Grosjean and Jiri Novak completed the top 10 at the time.

All of these top 10 players from July 2003 are now retired from tennis, with Federer the last of those to say farewell to the sport.

The ATP rankings after Roger Federer won his last Grand Slam title

Federer would win his first Grand Slam title in 2003, and his final major victory came at the 2018 Australian Open.

This was when Federer was 36 years old, but he was actually ranked higher than when he won his first major title.

At the time of Federer’s first Grand Slam win, Rafael Nadal was ranked outside the world’s top 60.

However, when Federer won his last Grand Slam title, Nadal was the world number one as the reigning French Open and US Open champion.

Despite the big three dominating tennis for so much of the 21st century, this was actually a period when Novak Djokovic was not inside the top 10 of the ATP rankings after struggling with an elbow injury.

Instead, following Nadal and Federer was Marin Cilic, who had lost to the Swiss in the Wimbledon and Australian Open finals.

Some of the other names in the top 10 after the 2018 Australian Open were Grigor Dimitrov, Alexander Zverev, Dominic Thiem, David Goffin, Jack Sock, Juan Martin del Potro and Pablo Carreno Busta.

Five of the top 10 at this time are now retired, and only Zverev remains in the top 10 seven years later.

Carlos Alcaraz is the current world number one, but he was just two months old when Federer won his first Grand Slam.