As many people know, professional tennis implements a 52-week rolling points system. Usually, every Monday the ATP releases a new edition of the Singles and Doubles Standings.
The most important of these is the singles standings, so much so that we only need to mention the ranking of players, unless specifically pointed out, it refers to the singles points ranking.
Doubles aside, ATP actually publishes three singles points rankings each week: Singles (which is the singles points ranking we mentioned earlier), Singles Race (singles annual standings), and Race to Milan (New Forces Annual Points Ranking), as shown in the three red circles below.
The first Singles ranking is a 52-week rolling points system, with players' points including points from previous year's matches, normally earned in the past year. For example, if Monday is April 4, the singles points released this week are the sum of the points earned in the match from April 5 last year to April 4 this year. The main purpose of this point is to allow each tour to determine the qualification and seed status of players.
The second Singles Race ranking is calculated by calendar, counting only match points from January 1 this year, regardless of players' previous year's match points. If the first singles point reflects a player's performance over the past year, the second annual point reflects a player's performance this year, primarily to determine which eight players qualify for the ATP year-end finals.
The third is the Race to Milan ranking of the New Forces, which is scored in much the same way as the second, but only players under the age of 21 (under 21 as of October 31 of this year) are included in the scoring range, and the main purpose is to determine which eight players will qualify for the ATP Forces Nouveau Finals.
If a player is at the top of all three standings, he is a young player with a promising future who has made great strides in his achievements and has established himself among the top players.
18-year-old Alcaraz is one such person.
After winning the Miami Masters last Sunday, Alcaraz set a number of all-time men's tennis records and personal best records, praising his articles for a large number of online searches, and various journalists and tennis celebrities presented countless praises to the Spanish teenager from different angles.
Among these overwhelming praises, I think a sentence on the ATP website is the most concise and appropriate expression. At the beginning of the article, titled "Alcaraz is second in the straight-to-Turin Finals rankings, just after Nadal," the official ATP commentator wrote: "Alcaraz is no longer the star of the future, but the star of the modern day." ”
In the singles rankings, Alcaraz is 11th with 3411 points. Of the top 100 players, there are only two 18-year-olds. With the exception of Alcaraz, Rooney of Denmark was born on April 29, 2003, five days older than Alcaraz. But the ratio of the two is currently No.11 to No.91. The ratio of the two men's championship counts is 3-0. The total prize pool ratio for the two is $3.79 million versus $530,000. It's a huge difference.
The next tour will enter the European clay season, and clay is the type of venue that Alcaraz is best at, and he will have a lot of room to increase points. Relatively speaking, those players ranked ahead of him have some pressure to keep points, while the younger Alcaraz has less pressure to keep points and is expected to rise further in his ranking.
In the singles annual standings, Alcaraz has 1950 points, while the first place is Nadal (3350 points) who has won three championships this year, and the Australian Open runner-up Medvedev has 1900 points in the year, ranking behind Alcaraz. Places 4-8 were: Fritz, Tsitsipas, Aliasim, Rublev and Rudd.
If Alcaraz can reach at least the quarter-finals in the next three Grand Slams, there is a lot of hope for reaching the ATP year-end finals. On the contrary, if the Grand Slam results are not ideal, it is necessary to arrange the schedule scientifically and reasonably, and try to choose the ATP500 event that is relatively large to win the championship. Because the top players participating in these tournaments are not very concentrated, the competitive pressure is relatively small, and once they win the championship, they can earn 500 points.
In 2020, Rublev won the ATP 500 championship in 5 races, which allowed him to earn huge points in a short period of time. With this string of eye-catching achievements, Rublev qualified for the ATP year-end finals for the first time and has since gained a foothold among top players. I think That Alcaraz can draw on the successful experience of imitating rublev.
In the Race to Milan of the Year, Alcaraz is number one with 1950 points, and Sinar, who is second, is 800 points. Coincidentally, alcaraz and Sina are also ranked together in the first singles standings we mentioned, with 18-year-old Alcaraz at no. 11 and 20-year-old Sina in 12th.
If we look at the two men again, Alcaraz is clearly better, having scored 1950 points in four races this year, while Sinar scored 800 points in five races.
In the Forces nouvelles' annual standings, alcaraz at first place has 1,150 points more than second-placed Sinar, a huge gap. We can almost certainly say that Alcaraz will again be in the top eight on this list in November this year, thus qualifying for the ATP New Forces Finals again.
The question is, does Alcaraz still need to prove himself through this event?
In the ATP New Forces Finals last November, 17-year-old Alcaraz defeated Koda in three straight sets to win the championship and end the season with a record of five wins and only one set.
Coincidentally, both of the ATP Finals were held in Italy, the year-end finals in Turin, and the Forces nouvelles finals in Milan.
Turin and Milan are both located in northern Italy, and the two cities are similar in latitude, Turin is in the west and Milan is in the east. From the map, Turin is on the left and Milan on the right. In November, will Alcaraz go left to Turin for the ATP year-end finals, which represent the highest level of men's tennis, or to Milan for the new power finals representing the future of men's tennis?
In search of greater glory, Alcaraz is clearly heading all the way to the left! (Source: Tennis House Author: Yun Cirrus Yunshu)