The 2025 ATP Finals field was set at the last minute following Novak Djokovic\u2019s eleventh-hour decision to withdraw from the tournament, and that resulted in some tweaks to the original groups.<\/p>\n
The draw for the season-ending tournament in Turin was made on Thursday \u2013 three days before the official start of the event \u2013 with top seed Carlos Alcaraz, Djokovic, Taylor Fritz and Alex De Minaur drawn in the Jimmy Connors Group<\/a>.<\/p>\n Jannik Sinner headlined the Bjorn Borg Group and he was joined by Alexander Zverev and Ben Shelton, while one other player was still to be confirmed as Felix Auger-Aliassime and Lorenzo Musetti were still battling it out for the final position.<\/p>\n The pre-match tournament photo shoot only featured six player who had already qualified with Djokovic still in action in Athens while the identity of the eighth player was unknown.<\/p>\n With Djokovic beating Musetti in the fina<\/a>l of the Hellenic Championship, Auger-Aliassime then went into the Borg group as the final and eighth qualifier with the Italian taking one of the alternate spots alongside Alexander Bublik.<\/p>\n But seven-time ATP Finals champion Djokovic then threw a spanner in the works<\/a> as he pulled out of the event due to a shoulder injury as he revealed the injury got worse during the ATP 250 event in Athens.<\/p>\n That meant Musetti got pumped into the main draw as he took Serbian\u2019s position in the Connors group with their round-robin matches set for Monday.<\/p>\n There was no doubt that Djokovic was Alcaraz\u2019s biggest rival as the former leads their head-to-head rivalry 5-4, but the Spaniard is 4-1 against Fritz and 4-0 against De Minaur.<\/p>\n With the 24-time Grand Slam winner dropping out, Alcaraz has a winning record against all his rivals as he is 4-1 against Musetti.<\/p>\n Carlos Alcaraz pushed to the brink as Alexander Zverev crashes to defeat \u2013 ATP Finals Day 1 predictions<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n ATP Finals: How do ranking points and prize money work at year-end championships?<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Sinner is 5-4 against Zverev, 7-1 against Shelton and 3-2 against Auger-Aliassime.<\/p>\n But with Musetti moving up, Bublik took his spot as the first alternate, opening up a second alternate spot with Casper Ruud next in line, but there were doubts over his participation<\/a> as he was already on holiday, resulting in fears the ATP might have to scramble to find another player to fill the slot.<\/p>\n However, the world No 12\u2019s manager Tina Falster has confirmed to Norway\u2019s NTB that he has accepted the position and will soon make his way to Turin.<\/p>\n Of course, the fact that players earn $155,000 as an alternate is a big lure while there is always the possibility that one of the top eight could withdraw, meaning they would step up and earn more money.<\/p>\n The post Who is the second ATP Finals alternate after Novak Djokovic move causes havoc?<\/a> appeared first on Tennis365<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The 2025 ATP Finals field was set at the last minute following Novak Djokovic\u2019s eleventh-hour decision to withdraw from the tournament, and that resulted in some tweaks to the original groups. The draw for the season-ending tournament in Turin was made on Thursday \u2013 three days before the official start of the event \u2013 with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1300"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1300\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}ATP Finals Features<\/h2>\n