Ranking the five best players under 25 on the ATP tour

ATP under-25 No. 2: Holger Rune

Just to do a tease here, the player that is number 1 on this list should be blatantly obvious. If I were to have ranked any other player at number 1 I should have lost my ability to write about tennis. Or heck, write at all. All the rest of the players here have some kind of weaknesses that tey need to work on to sustain a high level of success in future years.

Rune, though, has the versatility of his game to be a danger on any surface. No, he hasn’t proven he can play well on tennis simply because he hasn’t played much on grass. Rune isn’t going to win Wimbledon this year, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have the skills to be great. He had played only three matches in his career on grass before last week’s Cinch Championships and Rune still made it to the semifinals.

I mean, how many players on the ATP tour can say they have a winning record head-to-head over Novak Djokovic? Rune does. It might only be three matches, but Rune leads the battle 2-1. While Rune and Alcaraz have only played twice, they have split those matches. Heck, Rune even has a head-to-head lead over Tsitsipas, 2-0.

And while all of those head-to-heads are small sample sizes, that’s because Holger Rune just turned 20 years old in April. It is definitely not out of the realm of possibility to see Rune play lots of title matches with the player who is number one on this list for many years to come.