Jannik Sinner returned to the top spot in the ATP Rankings last week after overtaking Carlos Alcaraz and now has an opportunity to increase his lead.<\/p>\n
At the beginning of March, Sinner<\/a> found himself 3,150 points behind his Spanish rival in the rankings with Alcaraz dominating the first two months of the year with back-to-back titles at the Australian Open and Qatar Open.<\/p>\n But the Italian has wiped out that advantage as he has won three consecutive ATP Masters 1000 titles, earning a maximum of 3,000 points as he didn\u2019t have any points to defend from 2025 while Alcaraz dropped points in Indian Wells, Miami and Monte Carlo.<\/p>\n On the back of his Monte Carlo Masters title run, Sinner started this week with a 110-point lead<\/a> over the seven-time Grand Slam winner as the Italian had 13,350 points compared to his rival\u2019s 13,240.<\/p>\n But that lead grew to 390 points this week without Sinner lifting a finger as Alcaraz\u2019s withdrawal from the Barcelona Open meant he was unable to defend his 330 points from his runners-up finish 12 months ago.<\/p>\n Jannik Sinner faces Madrid Open decision: Chase record that eluded Novak Djokovic or avoid Carlos Alcaraz situation<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Jannik Sinner backed to \u2018win more Grand Slams\u2019 than Carlos Alcaraz by former top 20 player<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n And the Spaniard has suffered another setback as the wrist injury will also keep him out of action from next week\u2019s Madrid Open, giving Sinner a chance to widen the gap at the top.<\/p>\n \u201cMadrid is like home to me \u2013 one of the most special stops on the calendar \u2013 and that\u2019s why it hurts so much not to be able to play here for the second year in a row,\u201d Alcaraz said in a statement<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s especially painful not to be there in front of my fans at such an important tournament.\u201d<\/p>\n As Alcaraz mentioned, he will miss the ATP 1000 event on home soil for consecutive years so, on the upside, he doesn\u2019t have any points to defend from 2025.<\/p>\n But on the other side of the coin, Sinner also doesn\u2019t have any points to defend as he also didn\u2019t feature 12 months ago as the Madrid Open was the last tournament he missed following his three-month ban.<\/p>\n The four-time Grand Slam winner is also yet to confirm if he will compete in the Spanish capital this year, as his team believe the Italian Open and French Open are more important, with Italian media reporting he will only make a decision later on Saturday.<\/p>\n If Sinner does indeed take part in the Madrid Open, then he has the potential to open a lead of more than 1,390 points over Alcaraz with a title run.<\/p>\n That would mean he would keep the No 1 ranking going into the French Open and he will also be the favourite to be top of the rankings after Roland Garros as Alcaraz is the defending champion while Sinner will drop 650 points after finishing runner-up.<\/p>\n The post ATP Rankings No 1 battle: Jannik Sinner has a chance to take dominant lead over Carlos Alcaraz<\/a> appeared first on Tennis365<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Jannik Sinner returned to the top spot in the ATP Rankings last week after overtaking Carlos Alcaraz and now has an opportunity to increase his lead. At the beginning of March, Sinner found himself 3,150 points behind his Spanish rival in the rankings with Alcaraz dominating the first two months of the year with back-to-back […]<\/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-2049","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2049","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=2049"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2049\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}ATP News<\/h2>\n
Rankings Impact<\/h2>\n