LONDON — Alexander Zverev is assured of finishing 2026 as world No.1 following Jannik Sinner's withdrawal for the remainder of the season, and Patrick Mouratoglou insists the German fully deserves the ranking even if he is not the best player in the world. Zverev leads the ATP Tour with 62 match wins this season after winning Roland-Garros — becoming the first German man to take the title in the Open Era — and then the US Open, with both Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz missing those two majors.
Mouratoglou set out his view in a video on his social media channels, arguing that durability is part of a player's value. “Zverev might not be the best player, but he’s the number one in the world, and he fully deserves it,” Mouratoglou said. “The first way I read the situation is that your ranking is your value. If others are injured, bad luck for them.” He added: “I think a player is not only performing on court, it’s also being healthy, it’s also managing your body, so it’s part of it. If someone is never injured and others are often injured, the one that is not injured will probably end up having a higher ranking.”
The French coach cited Jack Draper as an example — “Jack Draper is an amazing player, but he cannot maintain this ranking because he’s too injured, so that’s part of his history, his career, and in a way, his value” — and applied the same logic to Rafael Nadal. “There are the same discussions about Rafa. ‘Oh, if Rafa would not have been injured, he would have won X Grand Slams.’ Yeah, but there is no if. He was injured,” Mouratoglou said. “There are reasons why he was, and there are reasons why others were not injured, like Novak was barely injured all his career.” He stressed: “Staying healthy when you’re a professional athlete is a real skill, and it requires a lot of work, a lot of professionalism, a lot of sacrifice. It requires to be very careful with what you eat, to be extremely disciplined with all the physio work, every single day. There is a price to pay for everything.”
Mouratoglou made an exception for Sinner, saying: “It’s sad for Jannik because I think he’s part of those guys. I think he’s extremely serious, extremely disciplined, but this year it happened.” He added that Sinner would not finish this season at No.1 but would probably do so many times in future. Asked directly whether Sinner and Alcaraz are better than Zverev, he replied: “Yes, but they’re not number one. He’s number one.”
He said Zverev’s two Grand Slam titles this season answered long-standing doubts about his nerve, noting that with Sinner and Alcaraz out of the draw at both events Zverev became the favourite in what Mouratoglou called “maybe a once in a lifetime occasion”. “In the past, he had so many occasions to win Grand Slams, and he just didn’t make it. So at some point people started to think, ‘Oh, well, maybe mentally he’s not able to,’” he said. “Technically, there were 128 guys who could win it, and he did, twice. He didn’t play well, but he won the tournament, and that’s a huge quality. So I think he showed really a lot of mental strength this year, which is something that he was not able to show in the past.”