ATP Rankings world No 1 race: When could Jannik Sinner lose top spot to Alexander Zverev or Carlos Alcaraz?
Alexander Zverev and Carlos Alcaraz’s failure to reach the latter stages of their recent ATP Tour events means their hopes of replacing Jannik Sinner at No 1 in the ATP Rankings have become more complicated.
Sinner has been top of the rankings since last June when he replaced Novak Djokovic and he has a healthy lead over his two closest challengers.
Zverev and Alcaraz lost in the quarter-final of the Rio Open and Qatar Open respectively last week and missed out on the chance of edging closer to the three-time Grand Slam winner.
After this week’s rankings update, the Italian is on 11,330 points with Zverev on 8,135 and Alcaraz on 7,510. Zverev, though, could potentially start next week on 8,585 points if he wins this week’s title in Acapulco.
With Sinner now banned until 4 May following his two failed drug tests in March last year, there is an opportunity to bump him off the top spot.
As things currently stand, the 23-year-old is assured of remaining at No 1 until at least the Monte Carlo Masters at the beginning of April and that will put him on 44 consecutive weeks at No 1.
He will move into 13th place on the all-time list as he will surpass Ilie Năstase (38), Andy Murray (41) and Gustavo Kuerten (43).
Sinner will drop 1,400 points between now and Monte Carlo and that effectively puts him on 9,930 points, meaning Zverev has to make up 2,445 points (current deficit of 1,795 and 800 points that he is dropping up to Monte Carlo) while Alcaraz has to earn 3,620 points (2,420 current gap and 1,200 points dropping).
There are three ATP Masters events during that period with the Indian Wells Open, Miami Open and Monte Carlo Open all offering 1,000 points to the winner.
One thing is sure, Alcaraz can’t overtake Sinner as he can only get a maximum of 3,000 points if he wins all three events.
Zverev has a chance, but he needs to win at least two of those events and then also reach the final of the other one to move past that 2,445 tally. Alternatively, if he wins the Mexican Open, he only needs to win two Masters events.
Mathematically possible, but highly unlikely.
The Barcelona Open and Bavarian Championships will give the chasing duo a chance to close the gap as neither will drop points, but only a maximum of 500 points can be earned for winning the title.
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Sinner will also miss the Madrid Open and he will drop another 200 points there, while Zverev will drop 100 and Alcaraz 200.
Alcaraz, thus, will need to win three of the ATP Masters 1000 events and finish runner-up at the fourth tournament.
Zverev can get to No 1 with two title runs (2,000), a semi-final (400) and a last-16 appearance (100) or two ATP Masters 1000 titles and winning the Mexican or Munich title as that would put him on 9,735 after Madrid while Sinner will be on 9,730.
And the bad news for Zverev and Alcaraz is the fact that Sinner returns at the Italian Open and he doesn’t have any points to defend at the tournament while the German is the defending champion so will drop 1,000 points while Alcaraz also didn’t feature last year.
