Tennis world rankings: What makes Alexander Zverev deservedly number one

It is considered a small flaw when football teams become champions “on the couch”. When their lead becomes unassailable due to the results of their pursuers, while they themselves are not even on the pitch.

If you follow this logic, it would only be a triumph for Alexander Zverev with a footnote that he will almost certainly become the second German after Boris Becker to become number one in the tennis world rankings. The news that previous leader Jannik Sinner had to end his season early due to a knee injury finally came on Tuesday afternoon, two days after Zverev was eliminated from the tournament in Beijing by Novak Djokovic.

The calculation now goes like this: Zverev currently has 9,720 points, but even if he doesn't win any more matches from now on, he would have 8,740 at the end of the season. Sinner, on the other hand, is currently at 11,000 points but is still losing 3,500 of them. The currently third-placed Carlos Alcaraz, who also had to take a five-month injury break this season, could only get just over 9,000 points if he were to play and win a tournament in every remaining week from now on. It is therefore more realistic that Zverev will officially reach the top of the rankings by the beginning of November at the latest.

It is undoubtedly a little strange that Zverev is fulfilling his long-held dream in a year that, overall, is not even one of his best. He has not yet won a tournament in the 1000, 500 or 250 category this season, which in the past decade was only the case in the year of his serious ligament injury in 2022. He has already lost as many matches as he did in the entire season in 2021, for example. In 2026 he won just two of his ten duels so far with other top ten players.

But Zverev has shone in another respect this year: he has managed to take advantage of the extraordinary opportunity. He won his first two Grand Slam titles at the French Open and the US Open because he was there as the “best of the rest” when Sinner and Alcaraz were either injured or left out because they were not in top shape. It is wrong to portray this as their own fault, as Zverev's brother and manager Mischa recently did in an interview with Sport1. But it is correct to see this as a credit to Zverev, who has been one of the fittest professionals on the tour for years and has learned to manage the load cleverly.

Zverev is still not the best tennis player on the planet at the moment. That's what he said himself after winning the US Open and referred to his record in direct duels with the two true dominators. He has lost all ten duels against Sinner in the past two years and four out of six against Alcaraz. However, the world rankings are not an indication of who is currently the best tennis player in the world, but rather who has been the most consistent over a twelve-month period. And that has been Alexander Zverev by far since the beginning of the year. The fact that this could now make him number one even “on the couch” is not a flaw, but the reward he deserves.