The two current best in the field shone in 2025, sharing all four Grand Slams and competing against each other in three of those four finals. Sinner reigned supreme in Australia, beating Alexander Zverev to defend his crown, before Alcaraz hit back at Roland Garros and rallied to overturn a two-set deficit against his Italian opponent. At Wimbledon the two battled it out again in the showpiece event, with Sinner this time emerging with his first All England Club win. Then in the Big Apple, Alcaraz ended Sinner’s dominance on the hard court by winning three sets to one.
Online tennis betting sites believe the pair’s legendary rivalry will continue well into the next year. One can betting on tennis at Bovadaand the American gambling giant currently makes both men the joint 6/4 favorite to win in Melbourne in January. But before the curtain can rise on the 2026 campaign, 2025 still has to come to an end, and that will happen next month in Turin with the ATP Finals. But anyone who thinks Sinner and Alcaraz will simply blow through the rest of the field should think again.
Over the years, a slew of underdogs have risen to prominence at the end-of-year extravaganza, defying their humble position to topple the world’s best players and emerge victorious. These are the three lowest-ranked winners in recent history.
David Nalbandian
Picture this: Shanghai, Masters Cup, November 2005. The tennis season is already a drag; the Finale, a lesson in mental exhaustion. Eighth seed David Nalbandian was barely on the radar, a late entry sliding in as Andy Roddick’s replacement. He had zero titles all year, just the memory of marathon comebacks – five sets against Lleyton Hewitt at the Australian Open, coming back from two-set deficits at Wimbledon – enough to mark him as tough, if not transcendent.
Numbers can be deceptive. Nalbandian arrived with a 43-19 record, not glitzy but resolute, the antithesis of Roger Federer’s 35-match winning streak. No one gave the Argentinian a prayer. But something serious and magical stirred in the cauldron. The Argentinian moved quietly through the group stages, picked off Nikolay Davydenko in the semi-finals and then faced Federer – a man at the height of his powers, who collected records as souvenirs.
After being two sets down, Nalbandian played as if he had been liberated. The world watched and could hardly believe it when his silky backhand started finding unlikely angles and fire entered his footwork. Federer hesitated and then fought, but Nalbandian refused to wither even as the tiebreaks wobbled. The final margin: 6-7(4), 6-7(11), 6-2, 6-1, 7-6(3). The performance was one for folklore: an eighth seed toppling the Goliath of the Tour, forever the lowest-ranked champion, and in many eyes the greatest breakout of the finals.
Novak Djokovic
Some legends win because it’s expected of them. Others, like Novak Djokovic in 2022, do it when even faith flickers. The Serbian’s year was an exercise in chaos theory: visa drama kept him away from Melbourne and the American swing, his Top 5 run rebounded and his key prospects were disfigured by headlines and politics. He ended up in Turin as the seventh seed – a number that would make a mockery of his years of dominance, if not for the circumstances.
But Djokovic is Djokovic precisely because crisis is context and never fate. The stats of his run? Peerless. Undefeated in all five matches: Stefanos Tsitsipas, Andrey Rublev, Daniil Medvedev, Taylor Fritz and Casper Ruud have all been swept aside, each match a cold demonstration of tennis IQ, resilience and that staccato two-handed backhand. He didn’t just beat Federer’s record his seventh ATP Finals titlebut at the age of 35 he became the event’s oldest champion and, thanks to ATP’s new prize structure, its richest.
Grigor Dimitrov
For years, Grigor Dimitrov was tennis’s enigma: a Federer imitator, an artist seemingly exiled from the substance. In 2017 everything changed. Armed with a newly honed fitness advantage, a Cincinnati Masters title and his best ever season, the unknown Bulgarian arrived in London sixth: talented, but everyone else’s second choice.
In the neon-lit grounds of the Big Smoke, he was majestic. The backhand was velvet; the movement balletic. He defeated his group and won against Dominic Thiem, David Goffin and Pablo Carreño Busta. Semifinals: After a slow first set against Jack Sock, Dimitrov exploded, dropping just one game in the next two sets. The final: a rematch with Goffin, who had just stunned Federer in the semifinals and rode in a dream himself.
This was no fairytale cruise; Dimitrov had to bury the nerves, save himself from break points and tilt the momentum back to the line. The finish: a 7-5, 4-6, 6-3 grind that crowned him undefeated and pushed him to world No. 3. He would never climb such heights again.
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