Tennis: New Zealand's new number one

Finn Tearney.

A new player has emerged in the New Zealand tennis scene and while he may not be a household name yet, he's taken the No.1 singles ranking for a Kiwi player.

Finn Tearney, 25, from Wellington has seen his ATP singles ranking go from around 1600 at the start of this year to 366 in the latest world rankings released last night.

Tearney had solid results in Futures and Challengers including wins over two top 200 ranked players in 2015.

He accounted for former top 100 player, Somdev Devvarman of India who was ranked 136 at the time when they clashed in February. Later in the year he defeated 184th ranked Ti Chen from Chinese Taipei.

He also won his first Futures singles title (Cairns) and was a finalist at two others. He also won four Futures doubles titles this year.

Tearney has previously had an ATP ranking but then studied at Pepperdine University in California where he excelled and was ranked No.14 in singles and No.2 in doubles in NCAA Div 1 Collegiate tennis in the United States.

With a current ranking of 366 Tearney is 23 places ahead of Rubin Statham at 389 with Michael Venus the third ranked Kiwi in singles at 668. Artem Sitak heads the doubles rankings at 43 with Venus 44 and Marcus Daniell 76 in the world.

Tearney and Statham will be the top two seeds entered in next week's NZ Tennis Champs which holds the prize of a main draw wildcard into the 2016 ASC Classic (formerly Heineken Open) men's singles.