Jannik Sinner has started his 31st consecutive week at No 1 in the ATP Rankings, but the big rankings winners of the first week of the new tennis season were Kei Nishikori, Joao Fonseca and Reilly Opelka
Although he didn’t feature in any ATP Tour event last week, Sinner increased his lead at the top as his closest challenger Alexander Zverev dropped points.
The Italian didn’t have any points to defend and remains on 11,830 points ahead of his Australian Open title defence – a 4,195-point advantage over Zverev, who dropped 280 points after Germany failed to defend the United Cup.
Sinner is currently 17th on the list for most weeks at the top of the rankings and he will overtake Carlos Alcaraz – on 36 weeks – in the coming weeks as he assured of staying at No 1 until at least March while Ilie Nastasie is on 40 weeks at No 15.
Alcaraz remains third in the rankings, but he is now just 625 points adrift of Zverev with the latter having 800 points to defend at the Australian Open while the Spaniard will drop 400 points from last year’s quarter-final run.
Taylor Fritz picked up 250 points after leading the United States to the United Cup title and he is now 320 points ahead of Daniil Medvedev while Casper Ruud completes the top five.
Novak Djokovic dropped 10 points after losing against Reilly Opelka in the quarter-final of the Brisbane International, but he remains seventh while Alex de Minaur is up one spot with Andrey Rublev dropping a place.
Opelka finished runner-up in Brisbane as he retired during the first set of the final against Jiri Lehecka, but his run earned him 165 points and that resulted in a 122-place surge to No 171 in the rankings.
