Spanish tennis player Carlos Alcaraz has set another record. He is the youngest player ever to finish the year as world number 1. Alcaraz, 19, takes over the record from Australia’s Lleyton Hewitt, who was 20 years and 275 days old when he finished the 2001 season as world leader.
Alcaraz will be 19 years and 214 days old when the last ranking of this year will be published in a few weeks. The Spanish teenager could have been knocked out of first place this week by his compatriot Rafael Nadal, who should have won the ATP Finals. However, the 36-year-old Spaniard lost his first two matches in the group and has already been eliminated. Alcaraz is missing from the year-end tournament. The winner of the US Open recently had to end his season due to an abdominal muscle injury.
Alcaraz started this year as number 32 in the world. He won five tournaments in 2022, including the US Open. After his triumph in New York, the Spaniard became the youngest number 1 ever in the world ranking, which has been kept by the ATP since 1973.
Alcaraz ends the hegemony of the ‘big four’ (Nadal, Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray) in tennis. Since 2004, one of them has always been at the top of the global ranking at the end of the year. For the past two years it has been Djokovic. The Serbian topped the table a total of seven times at the end of the season. He is the record holder.
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