{"id":283784,"date":"2025-11-14T10:56:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-14T10:56:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/283784\/"},"modified":"2025-11-14T10:56:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-14T10:56:08","slug":"carlos-alcaraz-secures-season-ending-no-1-world-ranking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/283784\/","title":{"rendered":"Carlos Alcaraz secures season-ending No. 1 world ranking"},"content":{"rendered":"

TURIN, Italy — When it came down to it, Carlos Alcaraz<\/a> needed less than 90 minutes to secure the year-ending No. 1 ranking in men’s tennis.<\/p>\n

Alcaraz needed one more win at the ATP Finals to beat Jannik Sinner<\/a> to the No. 1 spot, and the Spaniard eased to a 6-4, 6-1 victory over Italian Lorenzo Musetti<\/a> on Thursday to sweep his group at the season-ending event for the top eight players.<\/p>\n

“It means the world to me, to be honest,” Alcaraz said in his on-court interview. “The year No. 1 is always a goal. To be honest, at the beginning of the year, I saw that the No. 1 [was] really, really far away, with Jannik there, winning almost every tournament he plays.<\/p>\n

“From the middle of the season till now, I put the goal for the No. 1 because I thought it was there … and finally, I got it. For me, it means everything, the work that we put every day during the whole season, up and downs … so I’m really proud about my team and myself.”<\/p>\n

Carlos Alcaraz secured the season-ending No. 1 spot in the ATP world rankings for the second time in the last four years.\u00a0Photo Agency\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

It is the second time in his career that the 22-year-old Alcaraz has ended the year at the top of the rankings.<\/p>\n

The Spaniard became the youngest player to finish a year at No. 1 in 2022, when he achieved the feat as a 19-year-old.<\/p>\n

Alcaraz had to win three of his matches at the season-ending event for the top-eight players to finish No. 1, while Sinner had to go undefeated to defend his title to be in with a chance.<\/p>\n

Alcaraz — who admitted he was feeling nervous at the beginning of the match — didn’t give Sinner that chance as he swept aside Musetti despite a partisan home crowd, sealing the result on his third match point.<\/p>\n

That was his third win in the Jimmy Connors group, and Alcaraz will face the winner of Friday’s match between Alexander Zverev<\/a> and Felix Auger-Aliassime<\/a> in Saturday’s semifinal.<\/p>\n

De Minaur advances<\/p>\n

The victory also sent Alex de Minaur<\/a> through to the semifinals after the Australian earlier claimed his first ATP Finals victory.<\/p>\n

De Minaur beat Taylor Fritz<\/a> 7-6 (3), 6-3 for his first victory in six matches at the tournament, following his debut last year.<\/p>\n

“I finally won here in Torino,” said De Minaur, who needed a straight-set win to stay in contention for a semifinal spot.<\/p>\n

De Minaur never looked back after dominating the tiebreaker and had a chance to seal victory on Fritz’s serve when he moved to match point, but the American held. De Minaur kept his nerve on serve to triumph.<\/p>\n

The seventh seed will face Sinner in the final four.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TURIN, Italy — When it came down to it, Carlos Alcaraz needed less than 90 minutes to secure…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":283785,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":["post-283784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=283784"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283784\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/283785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}