Carlos Alcaraz will finish this season as the World No. 3 on the ATP Tour, a surprising conclusion given his Grand Slam accomplishments.
Grand Slams award players with the most prize money and ranking points. Winning a major almost guaranteed a Top 20 breakout for anyone outside the Top 100, as Emma Raducanu discovered at the 2021 US Open.
It has the potential to propel players with higher rankings into the top ten. For those competing for the top places, winning a Grand Slam increases their chances of becoming the World No. 1 player.
While winning a major awards 2,000 points, winning an ATP Masters 1000 tournament, for example, awards only 1,000 points. This year, Jannik Sinner won two majors, and he’s the World No. 1 player with 11,830 points.
Surprisingly, Alcaraz, who has won two Grand Slams, is not ranked below him. The teenage Spaniard won Roland Garros and defended his crown at Wimbledon, gaining 4,000 points for just these two tournaments.
Still, Alexander Zverev is the World No. 2 player, with 7,915 points, more than Alcaraz’s 7,010. As a result, the young Spaniard became the only player in history to finish the year outside of the Top 2, despite winning two majors.
That’s likely not a stat he wanted before this season, but it became a reality. It happened mostly thanks to Zverev’s consistent performance at tournaments of all levels.
At Grand Slams, the German player reached the French Open final, the Australian Open semi-final, and the US Open quarter-final. On top of that, he won ATP Masters 1000 tournaments in Rome and Paris, and he also won the United Cup, which counts as an ATP 500 tournament.
Alcaraz, on the other hand, also has one ATP Masters 1000 trophy, which he won in Indian Wells, and one ATP 500 tournament he won in Beijing, but other than that, he struggled to be consistent.
The way the ranking points are structured, reaching four semi-finals might award players more points than winning two titles and losing twice in the first round of a tournament.
In Alcaraz’s situation, he suffered several losses this year that came unexpectedly early, such as at the Cincinnati Open, where he lost in his first match, and the US Open, when he lost in the second round.
According to Roger Federer’s former coach, Paul Annacone, who spoke on the Tennis Channel’s Inside-In Podcast, this result is “a glitch in the system.”
“In my opinion, Sasha Zverev’s had an amazing year. The points don’t lie. He played an unbelievable amount of tennis, but if you win two majors and you’re not ranked two in the world, that, to me, says that there’s a glitch in the system.”
While it is unusual and possibly undeserved for Alcaraz to finish the season as World No. 3 despite winning two Grand Slams, the fact that it happened for the first time in history may demonstrate that the system was set up correctly; simply put, the extreme and rare circumstances this year made it possible.
Next year, Alcaraz will want to avoid the same situation, and he will most likely skip thinking about the World No. 2 spot entirely, instead focusing on the No. 1 position.
