Why Jannik Sinner’s 2024 season overshadows Carlos Alcaraz’s 2025
Carlos Alcaraz has produced the best season of his career to date with a remarkable 2025 but is Jannik Sinner’s 2024 still more impressive?
The two best players in the men’s game right now fought out another major final, with Sinner this time taking victory in the ATP Finals, but in terms of the whole season Alcaraz is the clear winner.
The Spaniard ends the year with the No 1 spot but does his 2025 still pale in comparison to Sinner’s 2024?
What do the stats say?
Let’s start with the stats, which for both players are incredibly strong.
For Sinner, he played in 15 singles tournaments last year, winning eight of them. They consisted of two 500 titles, three 1000 titles, two Grand Slams and the ATP Finals.
For Alcaraz, he played in 16 tournaments, winning eight of them. His trophies came in the form of three 500 titles, three 1000 titles and two Grand Slams. Crucially though, the ATP Finals remains missing from his impressive CV.
Across 2024, Sinner played 79 matches and won 73 of them, giving him a win percentage of 92.4%. While Alcaraz played the same number of games and won 70 of them, giving him a win percentage of 88.6%.
Against the top 10, Sinner won 18 of his 23 matches while Alcaraz won 17 of his 21.
So stats-wise, the two players are pretty even but it is when you drill down into the context that Sinner’s run starts to look more impressive.
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Why context shows Sinner’s season is superior
When Sinner and Alcaraz put down the racket for the final time, their stats may well eclipse everyone else in tennis history but it should also be noted that right now, they are not facing much competition.
This year, Alcaraz only has a losing record against two of the 55 different opponents he has faced – David Goffin and Holger Rune – but even they have only played the Spaniard a single time this year. Otherwise, no one has really laid a glove on him.
Of the top 10, only Sinner, Novak Djokovic, and Jack Draper won a match against Alcaraz.
2024 was a similar story with Sinner. Only Stefanos Tsitsipas and Alcaraz ended the year with a winning record while Alcaraz, Daniil Medvedev and Andrey Rublev were the only top 10 players to beat him.
But what separates Sinner’s 2024 and Alcaraz’s 2025 is two things.
First of all, there is the obvious caveat of Sinner’s 2025 drugs ban.
After testing positive twice for the anabolic steroid clostebol, Sinner accepted a three-month ban from the World Anti-Doping Agency earlier this year. While the ban itself had plenty of critics, mainly because it meant Sinner would not miss a Grand Slam, it did at least work in Alcaraz’s favour in that his route to potential titles was made a little easier.
While Sinner was banned from February 9 to May 4, Alcaraz won two tournaments: the ATP 500 Qatar Open and the ATP 1000 Monte-Carlo Masters. Sinner, for obvious reasons, did not have this benefit during the 2024 season.
Then there is the Novak Djokovic factor. Every year that goes by sees Djokovic move further away from his peak performance and the reality is that a 2024 Djokovic was a different problem than a 2025 one.
In 2024, Alcaraz had a 1-1 record against Djokovic while Sinner beat him in the two times they faced each other. This year, Djokovic again went 1-1 with Alcaraz and 0-2 against Sinner. Put it simply, Sinner achieved just as much as Alcaraz but with harder opponents in his way than Alcaraz has had to face this year.
Then there is the ATP Finals with Sinner managing to win it during his dominant 2024 season but also in Alcaraz’s 2025, ensuring his run would have one more trophy than the Spaniard’s.
Heading into 2026, both will be expecting to be the leading players once again but with both now at the top of their game, it remains to be seen whether either of them will hit these heights again.
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