The ATP Tour Finals plays host to Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner’s fight for year-end world No. 1, and Alcaraz is one match away from securing top spot after a stunning comeback win over Taylor Fritz.
Fritz, the great maximizer in this era, played the hyper-aggressive, front-foot tennis he has said he wants to play against the best. He made 79 percent of his first serves in the first two sets, hit more winners than errors, and rushed Alcaraz off the court.
How many of those sets did he win? Just one, the first one, as Alcaraz roared back in the second and streaked away in the third. It puts the Spaniard top of his group with two wins from two, after he beat Alex de Minaur 7-6(5), 6-2 on the opening day. Fritz is 1-1, having beaten Lorenzo Musetti 6-3, 6-4 in his first match.
De Minaur and Musetti rounded off the action Tuesday, both bidding to avoid going 0-2 in their first two round-robin matches. Musetti won the first set, but began to fade physically as de Minaur raced through the second and took over the third. But the Italian hung in there, saving break points that would have left him in real peril, and broke the Australian twice in a row, once as he served for the match and once to win it. Musetti triumphed 7-5, 3-6, 7-5, meaning all four players can qualify or be eliminated in the final round-robin matches, when Musetti plays Alcaraz and de Minaur plays Fritz.
Regardless of score, if Alcaraz wins and Fritz wins, then Alcaraz qualifies top and Fritz 2nd; also regardless of score, if Musetti wins and de Minaur wins, then Musetti qualifies top and Alcaraz 2nd.
Th remaining scenarios depend on sets. If Alcaraz and de Minaur win in straights, they qualify 1st and 2nd respectively; if Alcaraz wins in straights and de Minaur wins in three, then Alcaraz and Fritz qualify 1st and 2nd respectively. If roles are reversed, then de Minaur again takes the second spot behind Alcaraz, and if both players win in three sets, then it’s Alcaraz and Fritz who go through.
The only way Alcaraz does not qualify is if Musetti beats him in straight sets, and even then, Fritz has to win to qualify behind Musetti. Even a three-set win for Musetti and any win for Fritz will see Alcaraz qualify, with his position in the group decided by how many sets Fritz needs to beat de Minaur.
Carlos Alcaraz squeezed past Taylor Fritz to move one win away from the year-end No. 1 ranking. (Clive Brunskill / Getty Images)
Sinner’s group opened with Alexander Zverev’s match against Ben Shelton of the U.S., which the German won to extend his record against left-handers to 37-1. Zverev cruised through the first set, but the second went to a tiebreak, which Shelton led 6-3 before he missed two elementary forehands. Zverev, who served impeccably all match, came back to win 6-3, 7-6(6). Then Sinner, who needs to defend his title at the event to snatch the year-end world No. 1 from Alcaraz, beat Canada’s Félix Auger-Aliassime 7-5, 6-1.
Wednesday, Auger-Aliassime met Shelton in a match with both players’ hopes of qualifying on the line. The American recovered from being broken when serving for the first set to break right back to win it 6-4, but he could not repeat the trick in the second-set tiebreak, in which he bashed up his knee and went down 5-2 before clawing back to 7-7. Auger-Aliassime instead held his nerve to level the match, and then broke serve in the 12th game of the third set to win it, 4-6, 7-6(7), 7-5.
Sinner then beat Zverev 6-4, 6-3, which combined with Auger-Aliassime’s result, saw him qualify for the semifinals. Auger-Aliassime and Zverev are now in a straight shootout for the second spot, with the winner of their match Friday advancing.
‘Another Sinner vs. Alcaraz final looks likely’
Analysis by tennis writer Charlie Eccleshare
This draw was particularly bad news for Lorenzo Musetti — at first.
The strange contortions of the ATP Race to Turin meant that Musetti was still toiling away trying to claim the eighth and final spot when the draw was made, even knowing that he may have been fine finishing 9th.
Musetti, who hadn’t won an ATP Tour title in three years, knew that he would likely have to beat Djokovic in Athens to secure his place in Turin. And on the face of it, the draw gave Djokovic plenty of encouragement. He was not put in the same group as Sinner, his kryptonite and the world’s most in-form player, and he boasts a combined 14-1 winning record against the two players intially drawn against him, Taylor Fritz and Alex de Minaur.
The other member of the group, world No. 1 Alcaraz, presented a more formidable challenge, but Djokovic also knows he can get inside the Spaniard’s head.
Djokovic said earlier in the week that he would only make a decision on playing Turin once his involvement in Athens is over, and so the waiting for Musetti went all the way to his handshake with Djokovic after defeat at the Hellenic Championship, during which the 24-time Grand Slam champion told Musetti that he would not participate.
Either way, it felt unsatisfactory still having so much uncertainty on the eve of the event, and so it’s good news that from 2026 points from events in this equivalent week of the season will not be included in player’s totals for that year.
Another Sinner vs. Alcaraz final looks likely, but that would have been the case whatever draw had been served up.
How does the ATP Tour Finals draw work?
The eight players who qualified were split into four pots for the draw. Pot 1 is No. 1 and No. 2, Pot 2 is No. 3 and No. 4, and so on.
These seedings follow the players’ rankings in the ATP Tour Race to Turin, the table which only counts ranking points earned in 2025.
Each player then plays three round-robin matches. The top two players from each group contest the semifinals, with first in one group playing second in the other, before the winners meet in the final.
What happened because Djokovic did not play?
With Djokovic choosing not to play, the No. 9 in the Race to Turin would take his place. Musetti took that spot.
What do Sinner and Alcaraz have to do to finish year-end world No. 1?
Going into the ATP Tour Finals, Alcaraz has a healthy lead over Sinner in the race to finish 2025 on top of the world rankings:
Because of the rankings points structure at the ATP Tour Finals, Alcaraz will end the year as world No. 1 if he goes undefeated in his three round-robin matches, or if he reaches the final with at least one round-robin win, no matter what Sinner does.
Who won last year’s tournament?
Sinner won the 2024 ATP Tour Finals, also in Turin. He beat Fritz 6-4, 6-4 in the final, after going unbeaten through the event.
What is the prize money for the ATP Tour Finals?
The total prize money is $15.5 million (£11.85 million), which is a record for the event. Prize money is allocated per match win, and is structured so that the champion will take home just over $5 million if they go through the event undefeated with five wins (three round-robin wins, a semifinal win, and then victory in the final).
The winner of the final will receive $2.37 million, while the winner of each semifinal will receive just under $1.2 million; the prize for a round-robin match win is $396,500 and each player receives $331,000 just for appearing at the event.
The prize for the winner is larger than any of the four Grand Slams, the largest of which is the U.S. Open at $5 million. It is also the same size as the pool for the WTA Tour Finals in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, but is structured slightly differently: the winner there will take home over $5.2 million.