The end of the 2026 tennis season is going to look different in a way than many would have anticipated. Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner are unlikely to finish as the year-end No. 1, and they will have only won one major between them. Alexander Zverev won two Grand Slams, and he is probably going to finish as No. 1 on the ATP Tour for the first time.
It's been a weird year, and Alcaraz and Sinner have each missed a chunk of it due to injuries. Alcaraz hurt his wrist in April at the Barcelona Open and didn't return until the US Open in late August. Sinner injured his knee at some point, but he has not played since he won Wimbledon in July.
This week, Sinner announced he will skip the rest of the year to help his knee recover, basically handing No. 1 to Zverev. Because of the points Sinner will drop from winning the Paris Masters and the ATP Finals (the latter worth 1,500 points alone), Sinner will finish with 7,950 points.
Jannik Sinner's absence means Alexander Zverev will finish at the ATP year-end No. 1
Zverev has 9,680 points in the live rankings and didn't make it out of the round-robin stage at the Finals last season. Even if he skipped the rest of the season himself, he would finish at No. 1, as he leads Alcaraz by more than 4,000 points currently.
Alcaraz didn't participate in the Shanghai Masters, so he won't drop points, and he only made the second round in Paris. He is most hampered by having to defend the final of the ATP Finals and having 1,000 points to defend.
Zverev reached only the third round in Shanghai, though he did make the semifinals in Paris. Either way, he could gobble up enough points to know where he stands entering the ATP Finals. He is basically guaranteed to finish No. 1, but mostly through the backdoor.
If Sinner and Alcaraz had remained healthy, the chances Zverev would have had to win the French Open and the US Open would have been greatly diminished. This isn't meant as any disrespect to the German. As tennis fans have seen in the past several years, any player winning a major other than Sinner or Alcaraz wouldn't be expected.
Still, Alexander Zverev was the player to take advantage of the long absences of Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz. He did so on multiple surfaces, including reaching the final of Wimbledon, where he lost to Sinner. Zverev deserves to be the year-end No. 1, as he has had the best year of any player on the ATP Tour.
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