Carlos Alcaraz's untimely injury meant that one of the added attractions for several players before the start of the first Grand Slam of the year was to take the crown of best player in the world away from the Spaniard.
At the start of the tournament, there were only three candidates to take the number one spot from the Spaniard. One was the Norwegian Casper Ruud, but he was eliminated in the second round by Jenson Brooksby, which meant that all his chances were gone.
The other two are still alive and with a real chance of achieving their goal. They are Novak Djokovic, who seems that only his muscular problems in one leg can leave him in the ditch on his way to his 22nd Grand Slam, and Stefanos Tsitsipas, who is already in the quarter-finals after defeating Sinner in five sets and who is showing a high level of tennis. Both could lift the champion's trophy to kill two birds with one stone and also be number 1 in the ATP.
First of all, it is worth remembering the distribution of ranking points in a Grand Slam. The champion gets 2000, the finalist 1200, the two semi-finalists 720, the quarter-finalists 360, 180 for those who reach the round of 16, 90 for those who fall in the third round, 45 for those who fall in the second round and 10 for those who lose their first round match.
So Alcaraz, currently in first place, will lose 90 points (the points he earned by reaching the third round in 2022) and will be down to 6,730. Djokovic currently has 5,070, so if he gets the 2,000 that the winner of a major gets (whatever he does, he will not lose points as he was not able to participate in the previous edition) he would reach 7,070. For his part, Tsitsipas has 5,715 and defends 720 of last year's semifinals, so he could get to, at most, 6,995.
Neither the Serb nor the Greek would have enough by just reaching the final, as the former would be at 6,270 and the latter at 6,195, so their only option is to win.
Nadal's record in danger
One of the facts that demonstrates the dominance and consistency that Rafa Nadal has had throughout his successful career is that, since 2005, neither injuries nor occasional bad results have been able to take him out of the world top 10, something never seen before in the history of tennis.
His defeat, influenced by injury, against Mackenzie McDonald in the second round caused the Spaniard to lose 1,955 points and, when the Australian Open ends, he will have only 3,815. They will serve him to be in sixth or seventh place in the ATP rankings at the end of the tournament, depending on whether Holger Rune is able to reach the final or even win it.
But the six to eight weeks that Nadal will be away from the courts due to his physical problems jeopardise his situation considering that his start to 2022 was impeccable. He will not be able to be neither in the ATP 500 in Acapulco, where he took the 500 winner's points, nor in the Masters 1000 in Indian Wells, so he will also lose the 600 he took for reaching the final, so when he returns to competition, he will only have 2,715. At the moment, with that figure he would drop to twelfth position, although everything will depend on the performance of his rivals in these two months.
