Carlos Alcaraz, Alexander Zverev and Jannik Sinner<\/p>\n
Image credit: Getty Images<\/p>\n
Zverev<\/a> captured the first major title of his career at the French Open when he beat Flavio Cobolli in the final<\/a>.He then made the Wimbledon final, losing to world No. 1 Jannik Sinner,<\/a> before another title run in New York, where he overcame home hope Ben Shelton in the showpiece match<\/a>.Zverev is second in the ATP world rankings<\/a>, 1,810 points behind Sinner and 4,140 points ahead of Alcaraz.<\/p>\n He also leads the Race to Turin standings, where points are accumulated across the calendar year rather than the last 12 months as they are in the world rankings.<\/p>\n But with Sinner missing the US Open due to a knee issue and Alcaraz returning at the tournament after a long injury lay-off, does Zverev think he is the best player in the world right now?<\/p>\n “You have to take everything into consideration,” he said.<\/p>\n “With Jannik Sinner being injured and Carlos Alcaraz coming back from injury after four months, right now [in] this moment, probably yes. Both of them healthy and both of them at the top of their game, maybe not.<\/p>\n “But if we say right, right now with Jannik being injured and Carlos coming back from injury, maybe. I mean, four, five months ago when both of them were healthy, I wasn’t. I was losing to Jannik all the time.<\/p>\n “So if everyone is healthy, I think Jannik is still ahead. It’s as simple as that.”<\/p>\n Zverev has lost his last 10 meetings against Sinner, including five this year.<\/p>\n He only faced Alcaraz once this season in the semi-finals of the Australian Open and lost in a thrilling five-set battle<\/a>.<\/p>\n Zverev has also won just two matches this season against players ranked in the top 10 – Taylor Fritz at Wimbledon when he was world No. 9 and world No. 5 Shelton at the US Open.\u00a0<\/p>\n His overall record against top-10 players this year is 2-7.<\/p>\n Zverev has a chance to finish the year as world No. 1 as he has just 1,080 points to defend for the rest of the season and Sinner has 3,550.<\/p>\n Speaking about the No. 1 ranking in August, Zverev said: “Of course, that’s a goal. That’s definitely a goal of mine.<\/p>\n “I think still playing the best tennis possible should always be the No. 1 goal because then the results will follow. Winning tournaments will follow. Rankings will follow.\u00a0<\/p>\n “So as long as you focus on improving yourself, improving your game and trying to play your best, I think that everything else is just something that will follow after that.”<\/p>\n Zverev suffered heartbreak in his first Grand Slam final at the 2020 US Open when he gave up a two-set lead to lose to Dominic Thiem.<\/p>\n He then lost in two other major finals, to Alcaraz at the 2024 French Open and to Sinner at the 2025 Australian Open, before he got over the line this year.<\/p>\n “I think the scars of the 2020 final, they kind of disappeared after I won in Paris,” he reflected.<\/p>\n “I said it at Wimbledon. Even though I lost the final, I enjoyed the match, I enjoyed being in the Grand Slam final, I enjoyed playing on Centre Court, I enjoyed playing in front of an amazing crowd, in front of some celebrities and all that. I enjoyed doing that.<\/p>\n “Whereas before winning in Paris, I felt a lot of stress all the time, because there was always a question mark, ‘Will I ever win one?’ What I think now is just more of a joy to play those kind of finals.”<\/p>\n – – –<\/p>\n Add TNT Sports as a preferred source here<\/a> to enjoy more content like this.Download the TNT Sports app on iPhone<\/a>\u00a0and Android<\/a> for clips, highlights and breaking news.Watch and stream top tennis action, including the Australian Open and French Open, live with TNT Sports on HBO Max<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Carlos Alcaraz, Alexander Zverev and Jannik Sinner Image credit: Getty Images Zverev captured the first major title of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":771602,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,56,54,55,246234],"class_list":["post-771601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-us-open-mens-singles-2026"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=771601"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771601\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/771602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=771601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=771601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=771601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}