Carlos Alcaraz secures year-end No. 1 ranking with ATP Tour Finals win over Lorenzo Musetti
TURIN, Italy — At the end of a grueling tennis season, Carlos Alcaraz will sit at the top of the ATP Tour rankings. Alcaraz secured the second year-end No. 1 ranking of his career Thursday night, with a 6-4, 6-1 win over Italy’s Lorenzo Musetti at the ATP Tour Finals in Turin. Alcaraz’s victory ensures that world No. 2 Jannik Sinner cannot catch him, irrespective of what he does over the next few days.
The pair split the four Grand Slams between them for the second year running, but Alcaraz’s better results elsewhere (and his greater volume of matches) gave him the edge in their two-horse race.
Alcaraz’s overall win-loss record in 2025 now sits at 70-8, and he has a possible two more matches in Turin before the Davis Cup Finals, where he is slated to represent Spain. Sinner managed a ridiculous 73-6 record last year, but Alcaraz’s year is better than any of the other past five year-end world No. 1s, including his own 57-13 in 2022. His current points tally of 11,650, which could stretch to 12,550 if he wins his remaining two ATP Tour Finals matches, would surpass Sinner’s tally of 11,830 last year and be the highest year-end figure since Novak Djokovic’s absurd 16,585 total in 2015.
When Alcaraz was year-end No. 1 three years ago, he had a mere 6,820 points.
Whatever happens between now and Sunday night, it has been a stellar season for Alcaraz. His astonishing consistency between April and the end of September,when he reached nine straight finals, winning seven of them, including at the French Open and the U.S. Open, has defined his year and exorcized the already misplaced view that he is an inconsistent player.
At the U.S. Open he dropped only one set — against Sinner in the final — and served better than at any point in his career, broken just three times the whole tournament. It was a far more prosaic tournament win than June’s French Open, when Alcaraz saved three championship points in the final against Sinner, in a contest that lasted five-and-a-half hours and was instantly hailed as one of the greatest matches in the history of the sport.
Sinner may have missed out on thousands of potential points because of his three-month anti-doping suspension, but he did not miss any Grand Slams and points must still be won on the court. Alcaraz’s current win percentage this year of 88 percent is just below Sinner’s 90 percent so far (55 wins from 61 matches).
Alcaraz has won four and lost one of his matches against Sinner in 2025, extending his overall head-to-head advantage over his rival to 10-5. And that sole defeat, in the Wimbledon final, turned out to be one of the key moments in Alcaraz’s year, prompting him to work harder than ever just as the French Open had done for Sinner.
Alcaraz duly did so, turning a four-set loss against the Italian in southwest London into a four-set win in New York two months later.
And now here he is, only 22 and the year-end world No. 1 for a second time. That’s younger than Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer and Djokovic were when they recorded this milestone.
Alcaraz can celebrate if he likes, but the focus will be on the weekend and trying to win the ATP Finals for the first time, which would rubber-stamp his status as the man to beat in 2026.
