ATP Rankings: Alcaraz, Nadal end season as No 1 and No 2 while Djokovic back in top 5

ATP Finals runner-up Casper Ruud ends the season as world No 3

Carlos Alcaraz and Rafael Nadal at the 2022 Madrid Open Image Credit: Laurent Lairys / Panoramic

November 22, 2022

For the first time ever, two Spanish men finished the season as the world’s top two players on the ATP rankings list. 19-year-old Carlos Alcaraz, winner of the US Open but absent from the ATP Finals due to injury, finishes the year with 6,820 points – a lead of 800 points over countryman Rafael Nadal.

Nadal, aged 36, won the first two Grand Slams of the season to take his overall tally to 22 and move ahead in the race for most Majors in men’s tennis but ended the year with injury concerns and unable to make it to the semi-finals of the season finale in Turin.

This marks the first time in ATP history that two players from a country besides the United States have occupied the top two positions in the year-end rankings.

The two Spaniards are followed by Casper Ruud, who climbs one spot to No 3 after reaching his third big finals of the season at the ATP Finals. Ruud was the runner-up to Nadal in Paris, to Alcaraz at the US Open and on Sunday to Novak Djokovic in Turin. Greece’s Stefanos Tsitsipas, who won more matches on the ATP Tour than any other player in 2022, drops one spot to No 4 in the latest rankings.

ATP Finals winner Djokovic back to no 5 in year-end ATP rankings

Novak Djokovic moves up two spots to No 5 after winning a record-tying sixth ATP Finals title. The Serb was unable to defend his Australian Open title in January, did not play the US Open in September and did not receive any ranking points for winning Wimbledon, which means he will have a chance to gain considerable ground over his rivals in 2023.

Canada’s Felix Auger-Aliassime, Russians Daniil Medvedev and Andrey Rublev, American Taylor Fritz and Poland’s Hubert Hurkacz round out the year-end top 10.

At the lower end of the top 100, there are big moves for Argentina’s Facundo Bagnis (+10 to No 93 after reaching the Sao Leopoldo Challenger final), Ben Shelton (+11 to No 97 after winning in Champiagn for his third straight Challenger title), and Canada’s Vasek Pospisil (+15 to No 100 after winning the Drummondville Challenger.

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