The player, who missed the Australian Open because he tested positive for coronavirus on the eve of travelling to Melbourne, lost in the first round of the ATP 250 in Córdoba, last week, and was unable to avoid dropping to his lowest ranking since July 2013, when he moved from 102nd position up to 93rd.

While João Sousa, 31, is aiming, at the ATP 250 in Buenos Aires, to try to reverse the downward trend, world number one Novak Djokovic has this week equalled Federer’s 310 weeks at the top of the ATP ranking, a record he held since 2012, when he beat the previous record of 286 weeks at the top held by Pete Sampras.

In the same way that the 33-year-old Serbian remains world number one, the ‘top-10’ has not seen any changes either, with Spaniard Rafael Nadal in second place and Russian Daniil Madevedev, runner-up in the Australian Open, in third place.

Among the Portuguese players, Frederico Silva was the only one to climb the world hierarchy, moving up five places, to appear in the 179th position, after reaching the quarter-finals in the Nur-Sultan 1 ATP Challenger 125.

Pedro Sousa, after being defeated in his debut at the ATP 250 in Córdoba, went down to 110th place, just as João Domingues fell to 188th place and Gonçalo Oliveira went down to 296th place in the world rankings.