Nitto ATP Finals kickoff: Sinner Is Out. Djokovic Didn't Qualify. The ATP Finals Start Sunday

Sinner Won Every Match He Played in Turin. Then His Knee Gave Out.

Jannik Sinner went 10-0 at the Inalpi Arena across the 2024 and 2025 ATP Finals. He did not drop a set in either tournament, becoming the first man to manage that in back-to-back editions since Ivan Lendl.

He beat Taylor Fritz in the 2024 final and Carlos Alcaraz in the 2025 final, and left Turin both years as the best indoor hard-court player on the planet.

So Sinner pulled out of Cincinnati, then the US Open, then announced in October that he would miss the rest of 2026. He hopes to return for the Australian Open in January.

And to rob the tournament of even more star power, Novak Djokovic, who holds the all-time record of seven ATP Finals titles, lost to Rinky Hijikata in Paris and failed to qualify.

Between them alone, Sinner and Djokovic have won this event nine times. This time, neither will be in the building when play begins at the Inalpi Arena on Sunday.

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The Men Who Won Three of the Four 2026 Grand Slams Are Both in the Draw

Alexander Zverev won his first Grand Slam at Roland Garros in June, surviving a five-set final against Flavio Cobolli.

Three months later he won his second at the US Open, beating Ben Shelton. And he clinched the Year-End No. 1 ranking before Turin and has won this event twice before, in 2018 and 2021. Zverev is the top seed.

On the other hand, Carlos Alcaraz completed the Career Grand Slam by winning the Australian Open in January, beating Djokovic in the final. The Spaniard has since won five titles in 2026, including Vienna and the Paris Masters in the past three weeks, and arrives on a nine-match winning streak with a 42-5 season record.

What he has not done is win this tournament. In three previous appearances, he has failed to lift the elusive trophy, losing the 2025 final to Sinner in straight sets. Alcaraz enters as the second seed.

Between Zverev, Alcaraz and the absent Sinner, three men won all four Grand Slams this year. Two of them are here. The draw put them in separate groups.

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Group Stars

Medvedev, the 2020 champion, is the only other former winner in the draw. He returns after missing the 2025 edition entirely. Shelton, meanwhile, finished 0-3 on his debut last year and then lost the Paris Masters final to Alcaraz last week.

He will face Zverev in the group stage, and you can catch all the action in our Nitto ATP Finals coverage.

Jodar Was Playing College Tennis Last November

The story of the tournament perhaps rests elsewhere with last year’s college kid turned professional tennis trailblazer.

In May 2025, Rafael Jodar was finishing his freshman season at the University of Virginia, where he had won ITA National Rookie of the Year honours. He was ranked No. 895 in the world.

What happened next does not fit the usual trajectory. He cracked the top 100 in March, the top 50 three weeks later, and reached a career-high No. 11 in August.

Jodar won his first ATP title in Marrakech in April and made the quarterfinals at Roland Garros at just 19.

He is 20 years old today, and now the youngest player in this draw, set to open against Zverev.

And Jodar is not the only first-timer. Four of the eight singles players in Turin are making their debuts:

• Cobolli, the Italian who took Zverev to a deciding set in the Roland Garros final, plays in front of a home crowd.
• Fils, the first Frenchman to qualify since Gael Monfils in 2016, won his first Masters 1000 title in Cincinnati.
• Frances Tiafoe reached the Cincinnati final before qualifying for his first ATP Finals at 28.

No defending champion. No all-time record holder. Four players who have never been here before. An undefeated singles champion will earn $5.17 million. And the round robin begins on Sunday.

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Tournament Details

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