The ATP Round of 16 Hotness returns to the All-England Tomato Club for the first time in two years, as my esteemed colleagues Paul Quinn, Couch Baron, and Joe R survey what is probably the most tepid field yet.

Only at 2014’s Wimbledon could Andy Murray not only count on climbing out of the basement, but hope for a top-half finish! (…Okay, not really, but it’s ugly out there, people. Q threatened to quit if Lopez didn’t beat Istomin and I can’t say I blame him.)

Who will prevail? Has Nole lost the crown at last? Let’s run the numbers!

(Wondering about previous rankings? Enjoy the 2013 French Open, 2012 U.S. Open, and 2012 Wimbledon discussions.)

1 Feliciano Lopez
Country: Spain
ATP Rank: 26
Previous Hotness Ranks: n/a, n/a, n/a

Joe: For someone I was so into as a clean-shaven, long-haired, fancy boy, I am more into this scraggly, scruffy look than I could possibly have imagined.

Couch Baron: Short hair to go with those eyes, and a winning streak that includes denying Hotness entry to John Isner, the man who single-handedly made me hate the invention of the tie-break? Everything’s working. Front of the line, pal.

Q: Thank you, boyfriend, for dispensing Isner from the tournament, and for serving pure Daniel Day Lewis on the court. Is hot when all groomed, is hotter when all sweat. Is the balancing force in the Spanish Player Universe with the disappointment that is Robredo.

Sarah: I guess he’s too pretty. Let me keep looking at him just to make sure.

2 Novak Djokovic
Country: Serbia
ATP Rank: 2
Previous Hotness Ranks: 1 (tie), 1, 1

Joe: Still keeping it tight. I feel like I could stand to know less about the crowd he’s jet-setting with, though.

Couch Baron: Always my favorite, but with his recent Slam drought and physical issues, I’ve been feeling less awed and more “There, there, you’ll win the French one day.” Not much of a boner-killer, but a little. On the other hand: This field.

Sarah: I love him still, but my lady boner deflated a little after he booted (literally) the French. [“Note again that Hotness Councillors do not collaborate on these entries before turning them in.” — ed.]

Q: A walking advertisement for ordering gluten-free bread at brunch. So hot.

3 Grigor Dimitrov
Country: Bulgaria
ATP Rank: 13
Previous Hotness Ranks: n/a, n/a, n/a

Q: Oh be still my beating heart. Gorgeous. Seems goofy, like he’s oblivious to how smoking hot he is, which just makes him hotter. Has the body that Cilic should aspire to. We have a new No. 1, folks.

Sarah: I’m not sure if he’s a legit cutie or I’m just relieved that I don’t have to come up with a comment on Dolgopolov’s insipid men’s-field-hockey ponyt– oh, look at that. Anyway: Dimitrov. Let’s go “legit cutie,” but much depends on his hewing to an anti-frizz regime, and he’s taking too casual an approach to that for my taste at this point.

Couch Baron: His coach apparently recently told him, “Your body is your greatest weapon.” He may have been referring to his much-improved fitness, but still: NO SHIT. The face is fine — there’s nothing wrong with it, which puts him way ahead in this field — but remove the shirt and you see why he’s Maria’s Sugarpova. (What?)

Joe: Welcome to the rankings, beautiful. I can’t say I’m proud to admit how much hotter Dimitrov gets the more he looks like the bad guy in a boarding school movie, but I am INTO IT. The best thing to happen to the rankings in a long while.

4 Rafael Nadal
Country: Spain
ATP Rank: 1
Previous Hotness Ranks: n/a, n/a, 3

Couch Baron: The hair’s seen better days, which is especially unfortunate since he’s starting to thin on top, but as Joe will attest, the power of that ass is eternal.

Joe: I thought the years of watching Rafa in the Wimbledon whites might have dulled the appreciation some. No indeed! I’m not sure if he feels an unspoken pressure to bring it with such competition from the World Cup, but he’s holding his own.

Q: What is left to say that hasn’t already been said? The hottest ass on the planet. That piece is aging like a fine Rioja.

Sarah: As the rodent faces have spiraled — or, I guess, nibbled — out of control on the court, he’s gotten hotter to me off it. For years, I got a snotty-adolescent vibe from him physically; his behavior was never at issue, but he LOOKED like a guy who drove golf carts into the pool at the Golden Pines Club. That’s over now; he’s reliably edible.

5 Stan Wawrinka
Country: Switzerland
ATP Rank: 3
Previous Hotness Ranks: n/a, 4, 7 (tie)

Sarah: Not crazy about the neck-beard direction he’s going in lately, but when he cracks a grin, I forgive. Not that hot on paper but can wipe the floor with most of his “competition” this year.

Q: The Swiss No. 1. The best player in Switzerland. Slam Champion. I’m seeing some improvement in the skin, but it really doesn’t matter because I’d let him do me so hard. Such a class act, too. Get it, Stan. Loving the extra stubble he’s sporting this tournament.

Couch Baron: Grand Slam Stan. No. 1 in Switzerland. Much-improved skin…well, maybe not that last. The point is, he’s still adorable and is now a winner to boot. Plus, I bet he applies the can-do wisdom of that Beckett-quote tattoo to his efforts in the bedroom as well as on the court. Yes please.

Joe: Speaking of five years of living, Stan’s done that, and it’s shown in his ATP ranking…and on his face. Worth it though.

6 Jo-Wilfried Tsonga
Country: France
ATP Rank: 17
Previous Hotness Ranks: 5, n/a, n/a

Q: I know I’m on my own in the council with this one, but I don’t care. I’ve crushed on him for years. Even with that button nose, I’d still bang him all the way back to the French Revolution.

Couch Baron: I’m always after Tsonga to be less boring; the trimmed beard, while hardly original, is at least a step toward some style. Still, I wish he’d go back to the fauxhawk.

Joe: I like Tsonga as an unchanging, ever-steady presence holding up the middle of my rankings.

Sarah: …Guys. The beard. Is it really that simple? Because he’s back off the Z-list and in the top-seed running for me, and I feel like it can’t just be the facial hair.

7 Jeremy Chardy
Country: France
ATP Rank: 42
Previous Hotness Ranks: n/a, n/a, 5

Sarah: Your friend’s condescending foxy-but-knows-it rebound boink who lectures you about plastic bottles even though you already agree with him, and she’s like, “I know, but he can go all night,” and you’re like, “But so does he talk during?”

Joe: A bit of a Jekyll/Hyder when it comes to how his hotness fluctuates depending on how he dresses it up, but the Jekyll part certainly leaps him past a lot of these all-Hyde, all-the-time gents.

Couch Baron: Beard, no beard, headband, no headband, long hair, short hair — the man makes it work across the spectrum. Plus there’s something hot about a dude whose girlfriend is this sharp.

Q: No, I don’t want a glass of Chardy with my meal. Ugh.

8 Nick Kyrgios
Country: Australia
ATP Rank: 144
Previous Hotness Ranks: n/a, n/a, n/a

Couch Baron: The Outback Frat House gives us its Barely Legal edition; Benoit Paire’s not complaining…

…and neither am I (I’ll deny this in court). Also, plus a million points for doing everything it took and then some to stop Gasquet from another Hotness travesty.

Sarah: More like Nick Jr. AMIRITE? Cute, love the style, but he looks like a family friend of mine; said friend is 11.

Q: He’s only 19 so I’m going to try and keep this clean. Beautiful smile and would be my age-inappropriate summer crush if I weren’t losing my mind over James Rodriguez in the World Cup. Rafa needs to keep one eye on Kyrgios and the other on Dimitrov.

Joe: His face betrays the heedlessness of youth, and I kind of can’t wait for him to come back after about five years of living.

9 Tommy Robredo
Country: Spain
ATP Rank: 22
Previous Hotness Ranks: n/a, n/a, 7 (tie)

Q: For a moment there it seemed he would be the sole Spaniard representing, so thank God for Lopez.

Couch Baron: I don’t know; I still think he’s cute! Is there, like, a special Hotness LASIK I can get?

Sarah: Just okay before cutting his hair; now looks like Nathan Fillion guest-starring on a Criminal Intent episode as a bigamist art forger.

Joe: This late-career resurgence from Robredo has been great for the men’s game and even better for our purposes. He looks like the prize at the end of a dream-date board game.

10 Roger Federer
Country: Switzerland
ATP Rank: 4
Previous Hotness Ranks: 14, 14, 13

Couch Baron: I’ve said everything I can say about him, but extra minus points to Madame for recently passing on his genes to two actual madams.

Sarah: The floppy hair is back, and I still haven’t lost the sense that he’s a weird teary mess in the sack.

Joe: I am so sick of his face, I can’t even tell you.

Q: Federer is not aging well. At all. The face is sagging along with the career. Still the No. 1 asshole on the tour, though. So he has that going for him.

11 (tie) Kei Nishikori
Country: Japan
ATP Rank: 12
Previous Hotness Ranks: n/a, n/a, n/a

Joe: Keep on getting older, kid. Moving in the right direction.

Couch Baron: Look, you can throw what I wrote about Kyrgios back in my face, but he at least looks like you can identify an adult man in there somewhere. Anything I say about Nishikori would be actionable, by me if no one else. Pass.

Q: Cute. Nice smile. Beat Federer in Madrid. Never a bad thing.

Sarah: He’s kind of a two-face, and both faces are in seventh-grade homeroom.

11 (tie) Milos Raonic
Country: Canada
ATP Rank: 9
Previous Hotness Ranks: n/a, 15, 16

Q: David Ferrer, take note, you can improve your hotness with a hair cut. And I approve of Raonic’s new ‘do. But Jesus Christ, girlfriend, learn how to strike a pose when you strike the ball.

Joe: That a great skin-tone/ability to tan gets wasted on that face/hair combo is kind of a bummer.

Sarah: At rest, he’s puggishly appealing. During a service return, it gets real warthog real fast. That said, huge improvement; I’ve seen some haircuts I like a lot that point up his retro pluses.

Couch Baron: At the risk of sounding like the headmistress of the Nick Bollettieri Finishing School, we’ll talk about you leaving the Hotness Basement when you STAND UP STRAIGHT AND STOP STICKING YOUR TONGUE OUT WHEN YOU HIT THE BALL.

13 (tie) Marin Cilic
Country: Croatia
ATP Rank: 29
Previous Hotness Ranks: 6, 7, n/a

Joe: He’s like the non-hot version of three hot guys I know. He’s their Dorian Gray painting.

Sarah: If Jonathon Niese were Croatian, had a straight nose, and smelled faintly of imitation crabmeat. Thanks for eliminating Tedi-as Bore-dych, but: absolutely not.

Couch Baron: God, what was I thinking a few years ago when I thought Cilic wasn’t hideous? He looks like he’s taken up part-time bodyguard work for the Croatian equivalent of The Sopranos. As Sarah mentions, his only saving grace is having beaten Berdych, who’s actual human garbage, but still.

Q: Dude needs to work, like on his nose. That thing needs fixin’. Also needs to put on some lbs. Take a picture of Dimitrov to a trainer and say, “This is what I want to look like.”

13 (tie) Andy Murray
Country: UK
ATP Rank: 5
Previous Hotness Ranks: 16, 16, n/a

Q: I survived all the Murray apocalyptic events — his first slam; winning Wimbledon — so I guess he’s warming on me. Ranking him on a scale of 1 to 10: Bonus hot points for hiring Amelie as a couch and being cool about it; and for reading, and being read by, Virginia Wade. I mean, how do you even get into shit with her like that? It’s kind of awesome. That takes his hotness score to minus nine. A marked improvement.

Couch Baron: No one’s benefitted more from this year’s Hotness void than Murray. His hair’s doing better, I’ve seen him smile and not wanted to kill myself, and the Mauresmo coaching hire gives him a certain cachet. Enjoy it while it lasts, AN-day.

Joe: I have to admit, the Mauresmo halo has me looking more fondly on him.

Sarah: He’s looking better lately! He’s grown into the Adam’s apple and got a decent tan, which helps. Then again, occasionally he opens his mouth.

15 Kevin Anderson
Country: South Africa
ATP Rank: 18
Previous Hotness Ranks: n/a, n/a, n/a

Sarah: So, Peter Weller and Snake from Degrassi had a kid and raised it in a chicken coop. That wasn’t information I needed.

Q: Is giving everyone Stefan Edberg boring realness but with worse hair, good lord, please see a hair stylist. Book an appointment with Jonathan Van Ness, stat.

Joe: Anderson on his own is bad enough. That he robbed us of the chance to rank Fognini is unforgivable.

Couch Baron: Freddy Krueger reimagined as a South African troll doll. Hotness is supposed to keep me up at night in a good way. Brrrr.

16 Leonardo Mayer
Country: Argentina
ATP Rank: 64
Previous Hotness Ranks: n/a, n/a, n/a

Joe: Oh, pal. Oh, no.

Couch Baron: Oh, good, I was just thinking that what the Hotness Rankings need is one of the Always Sunny McPoyle brothers!

Q: It’s inspiring to see someone triumph over the heartbreak of being dropped on his head as a child.

Sarah: Youuu raaaang?

Tags:   Amelie Mauresmo   Andy Murray   Couch Baron   David Ferrer   famous boyfriends   Feliciano Lopez   friends   Gregor   Grigor Dimitrov   Jeremy Chardy   Jo-Wilfried Tsonga   Joe R   John Isner   Jonathon Niese   Kei Nishikori   Kevin Anderson   Leonardo Mayer   Marin Cilic   Milos Raonic   Nathan Fillion   Nick Kyrgios   Novak Djokovic   Oscar Wilde   Peter Weller   Q   Rafael Nadal   Richard Gasquet   Roger Federer   Sergei Dolgopolov   Stan Wawrinka   Stefan Brogren   Stefan Edberg   The Pove   Tomas Berdych   Tommy Robredo   Virginia Wade   Wimbledon