Jannik Sinner is already certain to remain ATP No.1 even at the end of the Australian Open 2025, the first Slam of the new season in which he will be called to defend the trophy and 2000 points. The victory of the Italian against Casper Ruud was not only worth the conquest of the final of the Nitto ATP Finals 2024, but also this very important milestone. The gap between the ATP No.1, Alexander Zverev and Carlos Alcaraz, is so wide that the 23-year-old will be able to keep the throne of the men’s ranking for at least another two months.
Looking at the ATP ranking, Sinner has a chance of closing with almost 4000 points of advantage over the German, and a figure close to 5000 compared to the Spaniard. His opponents, at least in theory, will have to get a series of important results to think about removing the Italian from the throne of men’s tennis, at least until the Happy Slam. Jannik would remain the leader of men’s tennis even if he were not to take to the court in Melbourne: to be clear, if the doping ban were to arrive following the WASA appeal presented to CAS and which would prevent the Italian from playing for a few months, Sinner would be No. 1 even after the Australian Open.
Jannik Sinner, ATP Finals 2024© Stream screenshot
The Italian is virtually at 9330, eliminating the points to defend won in Australia in January 2024, obviously without considering what will happen between the final of the 2024 year-end Masters and the 2025 AO. The threshold is already unreachable by Zverev, the number 2 at the moment, even if he were to win everything. The German, now at 7915, will lose the 335 of the 2024 United Cup and the 800 of the Slam semifinal in Australia. At the beginning of January, Zverev will play the United Cup again, where he can reach a maximum of 500 points, and then the Australian Open (2000). Calculating an entry of 2500 points, which is already quite an achievement, the Hamburg player would reach 9280, lower than Sinner’s minimum. With the same reasoning, Alcaraz would instead stop at less than 9000 points, considering that he will not play any event before the first Slam of the year.
Sinner will theoretically remain at the top of the ATP rankings until mid-February, when he will defend the 500 points in Rotterdam. After the Dutch tournament, Jannik would reach Alcaraz’s record of 36 weeks as number 1.