Tennis has been gaining more and more popularity over the past years, especially with the rise of new and young talented players who keep pushing the limits of their talent. If you’re interested in who’s going to be the top 10 tennis players in the world by 2022, read on!
1. Daniil Medvedev
Daniil Sergeyevich Medvedev (born 11 February 1996) is a Russian professional tennis player. He is currently ranked world No. 1 by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP). He has won 14 ATP Tour singles titles, including the 2021 US Open and 2020 ATP Finals. In the former, Medvedev defeated then-world No. 1 Novak Djokovic in the final to deny him the Grand Slam. In the latter, he became the first and only player to defeat the top three ranked players in the world en route to the year-end championship title. He has also won four Masters 1000 titles and contested four major finals.
2. Alexander Zverev
Alexander Zverev (born April 20, 1997) is a professional tennis player ranked by the Association of Tennis Professionals as high as world number two, and he has been a permanent fixture in the top 10 since July 2017. Some of Zverev’s most notable career highlights include: the titles at the 2018 and the 2021 ATP Finals, and a gold medal at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Zverev has won 19 ATP Tour titles in singles and two in doubles, and reached his first major final at the 2020 US Open, finishing runner-up to Dominic Thiem. The one outside of the Big Four who has as many Masters 1000 titles as Zverev, namely Djokovic, sustained an ankle injury and withdrew from the French Open in 2022, the same year Zverev beat Rafael Nadal to make the semifinals.
3. Rafael Nadal
The Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) ranks Rafael Nadal Parera (born 3 June 1986) as the world’s No. 3 singles player. Nadal has been world No. 1 for 209 weeks, and he has achieved the top spot five times in a year. He has won an all-time record 22 Grand Slam men’s singles titles, including 14 French Open titles. Nadal has 92 ATP singles titles, including 36 Masters titles, 63 of them on clay. He is one of only two men to complete the Career Golden Slam in singles. His 81 consecutive wins on clay are the longest win streak in the Open Era.
4. Carlos Alcaraz
Carlos Alcaraz Garfia (born May 5, 2003) is a Spanish tennis player who has been ranked as high as No. 4 in the world. Juan Carlos Alcaraz has won five ATP singles titles, including two Masters 1000 titles, and achieved his best Grand Slam performances at the US Open in 2021 and the French Open in 2022, both in which he reached the quarterfinals.
5. Stefanos Tsitsipas
Tsitsipas was born in Athens, Greece, on 12 August 1998. He reached the world No. 3 ranking by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) on 9 August 2021, making him the highest-ranked Greek player in history alongside Maria Sakkari. At the 2019 ATP Finals, Tsitsipas became the youngest winner in 18 years of the year-end championships. At the 2021 French Open, he lost to Novak Djokovic in the final after winning nine ATP singles titles (including two Masters 1000 titles). He has also reached three Australian Open semifinals.
6. Novak Djokovic
Novak Djokovic (born 22 May 1987) is a Serbian professional tennis player. He is currently ranked world No. 6 in singles by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP). He has been ranked world No. 1 for a record total 373 weeks, and has finished as the year-end No. 1 a record seven times. He has won 21 Grand Slam men’s singles titles, including a record nine Australian Open titles. Overall, he has won 88 ATP singles titles, which include a record 64 Big Titles and a record 38 Masters titles. Djokovic is the first and only man in tennis history to be the reigning champion of the four majors at once across three different surfaces. He is the only man to complete a non-calendar year Grand Slam in the Open Era and the first to achieve a double Career Grand Slam. He is also the only player to complete the Career Golden Masters on the ATP Tour, which he has done twice.
7. Casper Ruud
Casper Ruud (born December 22, 1998) is a Norwegian professional tennis player with a career-high singles ranking of No. 5 achieved on June 13, 2022. He’s won nine ATP Tour singles titles, and of those eight were on clay courts. Ruud is the first Norwegian man to win an ATP singles title, to reach a major final (at the 2022 French Open), to reach a Masters 1000 final, and to enter the Top 10 in the ATP rankings. As a result of reaching the quarterfinals of the 2021 Wimbledon Championships, he now has a career-high ranking of world No. 133.
8. Andrey Rublev
Andrey Andreyevich Rublev (born 20 October 1997) is a Russian professional tennis player. He is ranked at #5 in singles by the Association of Tennis Professionals, a level he achieved in September 2021. As of now, he has won 11 ATP Tour singles titles and reached his career-high doubles ranking of No. 59 on 18 October 2021. He has three doubles titles to his name and is an Olympic gold medalist, earning the mixed doubles gold medal at the 2020 Summer Olympics with Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova.
9. Felix Auger-Aliassime
Felix Auger-Aliassime (born August 8, 2000) is a Canadian professional tennis player and is the second-youngest player ranked in the top 10. He achieved a career-high singles ranking of 9 on January 10, 2022 and a doubles ranking of 60 on November 1, 2021. He has a single’s and a doubles title on the ATP Tour.
10. Hubert Hurkacz
Hubert Hurkacz (born 11 February 1997) is a Polish professional tennis player and has ranked as high as world No. 9 in singles by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP), which he first achieved in November 2021, making him the highest-ranked Polish man in singles history. Over the course of his career, he has been a winner of five ATP Tour singles titles, and his victory at the Miami Open was a Masters 1000, which makes him the first Pole to win that category. Furthermore, Hurkacz attained a career-high ranking of World No. 30 in doubles in June 2022.
