Alexander Zverev has never been world No 1, but he now has a chance to do so with Jannik Sinner sitting out the next three months due to a doping ban.
If the German plays the kind of consistent tennis he has been able to play for much of the last year, he could well snatch top spot before the Italian return in May. Let’s take a closer look at how it might happen.
Sinner’s doping ban
For those that have been offline the past 10 days, Sinner was suspended from the sport for three months due to a positive doping test in March 2024.
He won’t be able to play on the ATP Tour for three months and will lose some points, allowing those that are behind him to catch him in the rankings. Sinner has generally performed pretty well at this part of the year, so there are lots of points to be lost as his return will only happen ahead of the Rome Masters in early May.
Points breakdown
Jannik Sinner is firmly on top of the ATP rankings with 11,330 points, over 3,000 points ahead of Alexander Zverev who has 8,135. That’s a sizeable difference, but it’s not impossible for Zverev to catch.
The German will need to play some super solid and consistent tennis, earning points at every event that he plays because Sinner will be dropping quite a lot of points. We will break down how it looks for each player below.
Sinner’s points over the next three months
In the upcoming period that he will miss, Jannik Sinner will drop 1,600 points.
- 1,000 of those come from his Miami Open triumph last year
- 400 will come from his Monte-Carlo Masters run to the semi-final
- 200 will come from his Madrid Open performance
That’s a good amount of points that he will drop, but it’s not quite enough to ensure that Alexander Zverev will overtake him simply by him dropping points. More will have to happen on top of that if the German is to claim top spot.
Zverev’s points over the next three months
When it comes to Zverev, he is defending 850 points by the time Jannik Sinner returns to tennis.
- 200 points from Indian Wells
- 400 points from the Miami Open
- 50 from the Munich Open
- 100 from the Madrid Masters
Defending that on its own is going to be quite difficult for Zverev because he had a really consistent run during this part of the season and there is no guarantee that he will again. On top of that, he needs to essentially earn 1,600 more points to overtake Sinner, so can he do it?
What Zverev needs to do
So, can Zverev do what is necessary to overtake Sinner in the ATP rankings?
This question is very hard to answer because essentially it’s predicting what will happen in tennis. That’s never a good idea to do because it’s so fluid.
Zverev might go to the Miami Open and think that he could do well, but then face a player who is having a spectacular day and get beaten. Stuff like this happens all the time in tennis.
With that being said, our answer is no, it won’t happen mostly because it’s a highly mathematical problem.
If we break it down by the numbers, we know that Sinner will return to the sport with a total of 9,730 points. That is still a massive amount of points and very few players will be able to catch that amount this early in the season, especially because events don’t really hand out that many points.
It’s why becoming world No 1 without winning a Grand Slam is so hard. Majors give you 2,000 points, by far the most out of any events, and there won’t be any in the upcoming three months.
On the side, Zverev will remain at 8,135 points if he defends all of his points, which is far from certain. He would still need over 1,600 points to overtake Sinner and that just doesn’t seem very likely.
For example, he would need to win at least two of the three Masters events that will be staged in the upcoming period (Indian Wells, Miami Open, Monte-Carlo, and Madrid). The only event where he consistently played really well out of those is the Madrid Masters, as he won it a couple of times in the past.
Even if he wins that event, it will be very hard because he would need to win at least one more to overtake Sinner. It’s technically possible but statistically unlikely. His best result at the Indian Wells Masters is a quarter-final. The best he has done at the Miami Open is a semi-final, which happened last year. His strongest run in Monte-Carlo ever was also a semi-final, and the best at Madrid was winning it.
How does that look with the points? Check out below.
| Event | Best result | Points if best result matched |
| Indian Wells Masters | Quarter-final | 200 |
| Miami Masters | Semi-final | 400 |
| Monte-Carlo Masters | Semi-final | 400 |
| Madrid Masters | Win | 1000 |
This run would make it so that Zverev would emerge ahead of Sinner by the time the Italian returned. The only catch? These are his best results ever at these upcoming events and they didn’t happen in the same year.
So technically he just needs to do something he’s never done in his career. It can happen, but it’s not statistically likely which is why Zverev overtaking Jannik Sinner is also not statistically likely.
Some other players have better chances to do so, like Carlos Alcaraz.
Mostly because the Spaniard has actually demonstrated that he can set the world aflame with his play, and he’s been pretty good this year. He also missed a large chunk of the clay season last year due to various injuries.
If Alcaraz goes on a spectacular run and wins something like Monte-Carlo, Madrid, and Barcelona on top of the usual Indian Wells Masters, he can easily overtake Sinner compared to Zverev.
Conclusion
To summarize briefly, Zverev has a chance to become world No 1. In many ways, it might be his best chance to crack the top spot, but it won’t be easy. He’s going to compete with other active players and basically do something he’s never done before.
He’ll need to be amazingly consistent in the upcoming months and play a lot of tennis to get it done. It’s possible, he can do it, but it will largely depend on everything going right for him.
Read more on how the ATP rankings work or Zverev’s racquet and career.
