Alcaraz’s Shanghai defeat hands Zverev the year-end No. 1

SportLocation Tennis Desk · 13 Oct 2026 · Archive footage

Carlos Alcaraz’s straight-sets loss to Zizou Bergs in Shanghai ended his mathematical chance of stopping Alexander Zverev from finishing the season top of the rankings.

Carlos Alcaraz’s Shanghai campaign ended with a 7-5, 7-6 (7-4) defeat by Zizou Bergs, a result that also settled the race for the year-end world number one. Alexander Zverev is now guaranteed to finish the season at the top of the ATP rankings.

Alcaraz still had a mathematical chance of denying Zverev the ranking before the third-round match. Bergs, the unseeded Belgian, took the opening set and then held his nerve in the second-set tie-break to close out the upset in straight sets.

The loss came after Alcaraz had returned from a wrist injury that kept him off the tour for almost five months. He had won the Japan Open the previous week, but reporting on the Shanghai match described a difficult performance, with uncharacteristic errors and a level below that shown in Tokyo.

Zverev’s top spot came as Jannik Sinner was sidelined for the rest of the year with a knee injury. The German’s achievement marks a major milestone; for Alcaraz, Bergs’s win brought his Shanghai run to an abrupt end and removed his last mathematical route to the year-end lead.

Sources & further reading

BBC — Alexander Zverev to end year as world number one after Carlos Alcaraz loses