Mais oui, we’re back at Roland Garros!

Welcome to another convocation of The Order Of The Shallows! I’m joined once again by old hands Joe Reid, Zach Wilcha, and Myles McNutt as we rank the 2018 French’s men’s Round Of 16ers by hotness. Also Kevin Anderson is here.

(Wondering about previous rankings? They’re all right here!)

1 Rafael Nadal
ATP Rank: 1
Previous Hotness Ranks: 1, 1, 5

Sarah: Yeah, what’s left of the hair is an issue, but he’s coping nicely.

Myles: Not only did Nadal go back to sleeves, but he’s also steamrolling through the draw, and there’s nothing attractive about an over-dominant frontrunner who’s never pushed enough to tap into even half an emotion. But he benefits in terms of rankings from the fall of some stronger competitors.

Zach: The King of Clay and my heart. The only thing that could be better is if his underwear modeling would keep apace of his latest renaissance on the courts.

Joe: You know, you take for granted sometimes that Rafa Nadal’s butt and arms have been with us for thirteen years, and you start to get complacent. And then you see the effect that Rafa is having on the youth and you start to appreciate him through new eyes.

2 Dominic Thiem
ATP Rank: 8
Previous Hotness Ranks: 6, 2T, 9

Myles: I was watching his Round of 16 match, and he was tapping into some rage I hadn’t really seen before, and it did a lot to assert his adulthood after years of being trapped in the emotionless void of late-teenagehood.

Zach: His butt is so big, and he is always so wet. That’s enough.

Joe: I’ve said the thing before about the college boyfriend who you’d want to take home to Mom and Dad, right? He and Fognini would make a fabulous contrast in that way.

Sarah: One of these days I’ll stop mixing him and Schwartzman up. Ain’t today, though.

3T Juan Martin Del Potro
ATP Rank: 6
Previous Hotness Ranks: n/a, 4, 8

Zach: He is Groot.

Joe: I need him to beat Isner, so I’m holding off on my “why the long face” cracks for the moment.

Sarah: I just realized he looks like Damian Lewis, kind of. That’s probably going to ruin it for some of you but it’s a value-add for this ginger-phile.

Myles: I have a very firm hug-agnostic policy in which I accept but rarely if ever initiate hugs, and I’ve literally had dreams about losing a tough five-setter to DelPo and having him hug the pain away at the net. He’s just so darn lovable.

3T Diego Schwartzman
ATP Rank: 12
Previous Hotness Ranks: 8, 5, n/a

Joe: Short enough that you wonder if his parents regret not putting him on the gymnastics track instead.

Sarah: He’s a two-face, and one of them is maybe Alfred E. Neuman? But the other one is cute.

Myles: I’m ranking him higher this time because John McEnroe kept being a dick about his height on the NBC broadcasts and, like, we get it. He’s short. He’s not a sideshow.

Zach: The diminutive Argentine’s Instagram is a TREASURE where he and his bigger friends are always shirtless.

3T Fernando Verdasco
ATP Rank: 35
Previous Hotness Ranks: n/a, n/a, n/a

Sarah: A not-unpleasing-in-theory throwback to the dirty-old-man days of the tour, when half the top seeds looked like your trampy cousin’s way older boyfriend who didn’t wear underpants. In practice, too gummy.

Myles: I feel like Verdasco has aged a decade in just a few years, which is rude to say about someone barely older than I am, but feels true from a Google image search perspective. He’s leaning into the grizzled-veteran look but maybe feels like he leaned a bit too far.

Zach: There was something in his pants that night / his shorts are tight / Fernando. Pecs were bursting out for all to see / for you and me / Fernando.

Joe: We get too few opportunities to appreciate Verdasco in these here rankings, so let me take the opportunity to shout out one of the most underrated tennis hotties of his era. That he’s age-appropriate to me is a bonus. That rumors have it that he might be orientation-appropriate to me also is…something to daydream about.

6 Novak Djokovic
ATP Rank: 22
Previous Hotness Ranks: 3T, n/a, 3

Myles: Is it just me or is there a gauntness approaching? It also says a lot about Djokovic’s general demeanor that this doesn’t feel like a comeback narrative in the least. He just doesn’t look like someone I can root for right now.

Zach: I’ll admit that his recent vulnerability has made him more appealing to me despite his refusal to eat gluten and his activation in a feelings cult.

Sarah: I’m-a always put him close to the top because I love him, but the placement for me this time is a past-masters ranking, out of respect for his achievements. He better make friends with some bread and a headband before Wimbledon or he’s looking at an awkward nine.

7T Fabio Fognini
ATP Rank: 18
Previous Hotness Ranks: 7, n/a, n/a

Zach: You have to suspend belief that it would be safe to be in the same room as him and survive, but he’s objectively pretty attractive.

Sarah: He’s got all the tools…except a razor, which if deployed correctly would give him a bump here.

Myles: The addition of the lightning bolt collar along with the skull is a choice. Better than the Aussie Open camouflage, perhaps, but still. No.

Joe: Fognini is the Italian rogue in the romantic comedy who the heroine meets on her vacation in Venice and who sweeps her off her feet with his cartoonishly suave ways. (Dominic Thiem is the fiancé she’s cheating on.)

7T Karen Khachanov
ATP Rank: 38
Previous Hotness Ranks: n/a, n/a, n/a

Sarah: Objectively not that cute, but is a dead ringer for a boy I had a crush on as a tween.

Myles: There’s a bit of Del Potro here. And a bit of Dimitrov. And then just ENOUGH of a bit of Karlovic to throw the whole thing off just a touch.

Joe: He looks like the lead in a sitcom about a single dad who needs to learn about responsibility for once in his life. Is that a roundabout way of saying he’s a David Walton doppelganger? Sure.

Zach: Congrats to the Karen I mostly likely to want to see naked.

9 Sascha Zverev
ATP Rank: 3
Previous Hotness Ranks: n/a, n/a, n/a

Myles: I have no strong opinions on the situation overall, but I was struck going through Google images how much the headband is creating problems? There’s a few shots without it where he looks honestly pretty presentable. I wondered if he should cut the hair but really I think the issue is that the necessary means to control it while playing tennis are going to drag him down.

Joe: The more I look at his face, the less I understand it. Is it just the hair, which reminds me of all the high-school boys I crushed on but couldn’t approach? Because the face is the face of the teenage shithead who mowed your neighbor’s lawn and never quite responded when you tried to make conversation.

Zach: He’s not even my number-one Zverev.

Sarah: For reasons I can’t articulate, he’s serving me Ken Marino in Wet Hot American Summer. And I’m…not hungry.

10 Kei Nishikori
ATP Rank: 21
Previous Hotness Ranks: n/a, n/a, 11T

Zach: When his legs aren’t broken, or whatever injury is befalling him this time, they are some of the stealthily best ones to look at in the game.

Sarah: [shrug]

Myles: There’s a battle-weariness that is changing his aesthetic, but the accompanying underdog narrative makes it work.

11 Marco Cecchinato
ATP Rank: 72
Previous Hotness Ranks: n/a, n/a, n/a

Sarah: That great-on-paper OKCupid date who shows up a little drunk, spills red wine on you, and starts crying about his ex 15 minutes in.

Myles: Look, I know the whole point of this exercise is to focus on objectifying them and not focusing on context, but Cecchinato ended the Cinderella run of Marco Trungelliti who drove with his mother and grandmother from Barcelona in order to register as a Lucky Loser and make it into the draw, and that’s just not a good look?

Joe: It’s not that he’s not handsome. He’s definitely handsome. Minimal doof-face while striking a ball, too. I guess it’s just that my expectations for the Italians are a little more extravagant, is all.

Zach: There is a zero-percent chance that Brad Gilbert hasn’t said to some poor concierge, “Heeyyyy, I’m Marco Cecchinato this hotel, ehhh?”

12 Maximilian Marterer
ATP Rank: 70
Previous Hotness Ranks: n/a, n/a, n/a

Myles: There’s a real disconnect between photos where he’s smiling and photos where he’s not smiling that is making an immediate judgment very challenging. Just me?

Joe: Bro-ishly handsome enough that I would start code-switching whenever I was around him and then hate myself for days afterwards.

Zach: His brows make me think that he intends to lip-sync for his life for the title.

Sarah: It’s possible there’s a good-looking kid in there somewhere, but the over-the-top Blue Steeling during groundstrokes is doing a “great” job obscuring him.

13 David Goffin
ATP Rank: 9
Previous Hotness Ranks: n/a, 12, n/a

Joe: There is no single player on the ATP tour I would most like to see get a Queer Eye makeover than David Goffin. Think of what Jonathan could do with that same dumb haircut he’s always had. And obviously this ill-considered foray into facial hair would be the first thing to go.

Zach: In this world of lanky goofballs, I’ll admit Boy Henin is growing on me.

Myles: Remember what I said about Thiem asserting his adulthood? Yeah, not so much here. The Sidney Crosby playoff beard is not doing the work he wants it to do, though bless him for trying.

14 Marin Cilic
ATP Rank: 4
Previous Hotness Ranks: 15, n/a, n/a

Zach: Of the tall guys whose games and looks bore me to death, he’s not the worst.

Myles: The “Nah-er” to Isner’s “Nah.”

Sarah: In profile he’s actually kinda sexy. Not sure how that would work from a practical standpoint, horizontally, but it’s not hopeless.

Joe: Pity about that little girl he threw into the river while she was just picking flowers. Truly a shocking development!

15 John Isner
ATP Rank: 10
Previous Hotness Ranks: n/a, n/a, n/a

Myles: …Nah.

Sarah: Zzz.

Joe: Ironically, I need no tie-breakers to rank Isner as low as I have.

Zach: Human derp with bad politics. America, more than ever, needs a hot tennis player to have a breakthrough.

16 Kevin Anderson
ATP Rank: 7
Previous Hotness Ranks: n/a, 16, n/a

Sarah: To paraphrase Kelly Taylor just slightly, this face is never again.

Joe: Nu-Murray, back again for more abuse.

Zach: The living, lumbering embodiment of “God don’t give with two hands.”

Myles: Nah-est.

Tags:   Alexander Zverev   Andy Murray   Damian Lewis   David Goffin   Diego Schwartzman   Dominic Thiem   Fabio Fognini   famous boyfriends   Fernando Verdasco   friends   Grigor Dimitrov   Ivo Karlovic   Jennie Garth   Joe Reid   John Isner   John McEnroe   Juan Martin Del Potro   Justine Henin   Karen Khachanov   Kei Nishikori   Ken Marino   Kevin Anderson   Marco Cecchinato   Marco Trungelliti   Marin Cilic   Maximilian Marterer   Myles McNutt   Novak Djokovic   Order of the Shallows   Rafael Nadal   shut up Brad Gilbert   The Flying Zverev Brothers   wide world of sport   Zach Wilcha