As Jannik Sinner accepted a three-month suspension following his positive doping tests earlier this year, the starting gun was fired on the race to replace him as world No 1.<\/p>\n
Sinner has a huge advantage over his rivals in the rankings when news broke that he had opted to strike a deal with the World Anti-Doping Agency to take a ban rather than face the threat of a one-year suspension if he took his case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.<\/p>\n
Alexander Zverev was closest to Sinner in the rankings and there was a real chance the German could claim the world No 1 ranking for the first time in his career.<\/p>\n
That was before his form fell off a cliff after his run to the Australian Open final in January, when he was taken apart by Sinner.<\/p>\n
He opted to play clay court tournaments in South America after that and struggled to make an impact before lost early at the Indian Wells and Miami Masters.<\/p>\n
\u2018I don\u2019t think clay is going to be Jannik Sinner\u2019s best surface\u2019, assesses Andy Roddick<\/a><\/p>\n Jannik Sinner reveals how ban \u2018helped me a lot\u2019 as he prepares for comeback<\/a><\/p>\n Zverev was asked whether the chase for the world No 1 spot was impacting his form and he made these comments last month.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was in the beginning. Now it\u2019s less, because I\u2019m just playing terrible,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cSo for me, I have to find my game before thinking about that, because to become World No 1, you have to win tournaments. I\u2019m not \u201cI think I\u2019m serving quite badly the last few weeks. My second serve is fine, but my first serve is terrible.<\/p>\n \u201cFrom the back of the court I\u2019m not playing great. It\u2019s everything. You can\u2019t really name one thing.\u201d<\/p>\n Zverev\u2019s latest setback as he lost against Argentina\u2019s Francisco Cerundolo in the Madrid Masters added to his woes and there is more danger of his losing the No 2 ranking to Alcaraz than usurping Sinner at the top of the rankings.<\/p>\n Alcaraz has also been impacted by Sinner\u2019s absence, as he was well beaten by Jack Draper in Indian Wells and then lost early in Miami.<\/p>\n His Monte Carlo Masters win was a stand-out week for the Spaniard, but he admits the chance to take Sinner\u2019s top ranking has been on his mind.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of people are asking me, or are telling me, that I have the chance to become No 1 if Jannik is not playing,\u201d said the four-time Grand Slam champion. \u201cSo probably that pressure has killed me in some way.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not surprised. The people always say that we have to win the tournaments or the top people have to be there all the time playing finals or winning tournaments.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m just thinking that I\u2019m not able to become No 1 in the clay season. Even if Jannik is not playing, I don\u2019t have the chance to do it. I think I\u2019m too far from Jannik.<\/p>\n \u201cSo I\u2019m just here and I realise that I don\u2019t have to think about it and just go there and play. That\u2019s my mindset right now.\u201d<\/p>\n The biggest winner from a curious three months in the men\u2019s game appears to be the one player who has been banned from playing in the last four Masters 1000 tournaments.<\/p>\n Sinner will return to action in from of his home fans in Rome next month and they will be cheering him on and he looks to extend his dominant lead at the top of the ATP Rankings in what is left of the clay court season<\/p>\n READ NEXT: Who is Jannik Sinner\u2019s new girlfriend? World No 1 dating model Lara Leito<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n The post How Jannik Sinner\u2019s drug ban had a negative impact on his biggest rivals<\/a> appeared first on Tennis365<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As Jannik Sinner accepted a three-month suspension following his positive doping tests earlier this year, the starting gun was fired on the race to replace him as world No 1. Sinner has a huge advantage over his rivals in the rankings when news broke that he had opted to strike a deal with the World […]<\/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-380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380","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=380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\npast getting first, second round at the moment. So I need to figure that out first.\u201d<\/p>\n