Carlos Alcaraz was forced to pull the plug on his Barcelona Open campaign due to a wrist injury, and the setback has impacted his hopes of returning to world No 1.<\/p>\n
The Spaniard withdrew before his scheduled second round match against Tomas Machac in Barcelona after\u00a0sustaining the injury in his opening round win over Otto Virtanen.<\/p>\n
In a press conference announcing his withdrawal, Alcaraz<\/a> said: \u201cIt\u2019s a more serious injury than we all expected, and I have to listen to my body so it doesn\u2019t affect me in the future.<\/p>\n \u201cWith great sadness, I have to return home and recover as quickly as possible for the upcoming tournaments.\u201d<\/p>\n Alcaraz, who has spent 66 total weeks as the ATP world No 1, saw his sixth and most recent stint in top spot end at 22 weeks after he lost to Jannik Sinner<\/a> in the Monte Carlo Masters final last week.<\/p>\n Sinner\u2019s victory in Monte Carlo earned him 1,000 ATP ranking points and lifted him above Alcaraz into the world No 1 position.<\/p>\n The Italian \u2014 who is in his 67th week at the pinnacle of the rankings \u2014 has 13,350 points, which put him 110 points ahead of Alcaraz in this week\u2019s ATP Rankings.<\/p>\n Why Carlos Alcaraz\u2019s Barcelona Open injury withdrawal may be a harsh but crucial lesson<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Jannik Sinner \u2018currently stronger than Carlos Alcaraz on clay\u2019, claims former world No 7<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Want more from Tennis365? Add us as a preferred source on Google to your favourites list<\/a> for tennis coverage you can trust.<\/strong><\/p>\n However, Alcaraz was defending 330 points this week as he was a runner-up at the 2025 Barcelona Open 12 months ago, meaning he effectively started the week with 12,910 points.<\/p>\n If Alcaraz had secured the 500 points available for winning the title in Barcelona, he would have jumped to 13,410 points and overtaken Sinner to return to world No 1.<\/p>\n The 22-year-old\u2019s opening round win earned him 50 points and increased his tally to 12,960 points \u2014 moving him to within 390 points of Sinner.<\/p>\n Alcaraz\u2019s withdrawal means he has been unable to add further to his tally, which ended his hopes of reclaiming the No 1 ranking in Barcelona.<\/p>\n Sinner will, therefore, retain top spot until at least after the Madrid Open \u2014 which will begin on 21 April and conclude on 3 May.<\/p>\n Alcaraz\u2019s revelation that his injury was \u201cmore serious\u201d than anticipated has cast some doubt over his participation in Madrid, but he is yet to confirm whether he will feature.<\/p>\n If Alcaraz is able to play the Masters 1000 event in the Spanish capital, he will have the opportunity to return to world No 1 after the tournament.<\/p>\n The seven-time Grand Slam winner is not dropping any points in Madrid as he missed last year\u2019s edition of the event, which means he could increase his points tally by up to 1,000 points.<\/p>\n Sinner is in the same position as he was unable to compete at the 2025 Madrid Open. The 24-year-old could guarantee that he remains the world No 1 by claiming the Madrid title, or by matching Alcaraz\u2019s result.<\/p>\n Following his victory in Monte Carlo, Sinner revealed he was yet to decide whether he will compete in Madrid.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ll take two or three days off, then I\u2019ll evaluate with my team whether to go to Madrid or not,\u201d the four-time major winner said.<\/p>\n READ NEXT: Boris Becker questions Stefanos Tsitsipas\u2019 desire to \u2018turn it around\u2019 after disappointing Munich loss<\/a> The post How Carlos Alcaraz\u2019s Barcelona Open withdrawal affects No 1 ranking battle with Jannik Sinner<\/a> appeared first on Tennis365<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Carlos Alcaraz was forced to pull the plug on his Barcelona Open campaign due to a wrist injury, and the setback has impacted his hopes of returning to world No 1. The Spaniard withdrew before his scheduled second round match against Tomas Machac in Barcelona after\u00a0sustaining the injury in his opening round win over Otto […]<\/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-2038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2038","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=2038"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2038\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}ATP Tour News<\/h2>\n
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