Carlos Alcaraz’s hopes of cutting Jannik Sinner’s lead in rankings take a knock
Carlos Alcaraz’s hopes of catching Jannik Sinner in the ATP Rankings in the coming months have taken a slight knock after he failed to make the most of the world No 1’s absence at the Qatar Open.
With Sinner now banned from competing on the ATP Tour for three months, world No 2 Alexander Zverev and No 3 Alcaraz have been given a chance to catch up and possibly pass the Italian before he returns to action.
As things stand, Sinner has 11,330 points with Zverev on 8,135 and Alcaraz third on 7,410, but the three-time Grand Slam winner will drop 1,600 while he is on the sidelines, which effectively puts him on 9,730 points when he makes his comeback at the Italian Open.
His two rivals will also drop points as Zverev will lose 850 points and Alcaraz 1,400 so the German technically has to earn 2,446 points and Alcaraz 3,721 points to overtake the Italian in the rankings by the time the Rome ATP 1000 event gets underway at the beginning of May.
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Alcaraz started this week’s ATP 500 event on the back of a title run in Rotterdam a fortnight ago and had no points to defend in Doha, meaning any points he earned would have helped him to reduce both Sinner and Zverev’s lead.
Ahead of the Qatar Open, he revealed his “objective” during an interview with AS, saying: “Whether Jannik plays or not, we try to do well in every tournament because number one is an objective.
“Right now, as always, we are trying to focus on what we have to train, on what we have to improve, and from there we are going to do our best in the tournaments to try to get closer to number one.”
And reaching the quarter-finals, the Spaniard made up 100 points with a maximum of 500 on offer if he won the tournament.
But he suffered a shock last-eight defeat at the hands of Jiri Lehecka as the Czech won 6-3, 3-6, 6-4 for his first win over top-three player.
The four-time Grand Slam winner had a 4-2 lead in the deciding set, but Lehecka reeled off four consecutive games to take the match.
Alcaraz opted to praise his opponent after the loss, stating: “I’ve talked with my team, with my coach, and honestly I don’t know what I could have done better.
“Probably a few serves, a few points that probably I didn’t play a good point. Honestly, I don’t know. It was kind of a difficult feelings, I guess. I mean, I have to give credit to him as well, because when he was down, especially in the third set, he didn’t give up.”
The 21-year-old is now set to take a break before heading to the United States for the Sunshine Double with the Indian Wells Open starting on the fifth while the Miami Open runs from 19-30 March.
He will need to have deep runs at both tournaments if he hopes to close the gap to Sinner and Zverev as he has 1,000 points to defend in California and another 200 in Miami.
Zverev, meanwhile, has a chance to edge closer to Sinner as he has reached the quarter-final of the Rio Open. If he wins that match he will pick up 100 points while a title run will see him finish the tournament on 8,535 points, just over 1,000 points behind that magical Sinner total of 9,730 points.
