The Nitto ATP Finals begin in Turin today, and the first match puts World No. 1 Alexander Zverev against 20-year-old Rafael Jódar. It is the kind of opening that gives the season-ending event an immediate edge: the top seed against a debutant who has reached the sport’s year-end stage in his first full ATP Tour-level season.
Zverev arrives as the best-ranked singles player in Turin, Italy, even though the ranking alone does not settle the larger question of who has actually looked most convincing over the year. He won two Grand Slam titles in 2026, which is enough to make his place at the top hard to dispute on paper, but the draw has still handed him a first test against a player making his debut in the event.
That debut is what makes Jódar’s place in this field unusual. He is the first player to qualify for the ATP Finals the same year he made his full ATP Tour-level debut, a route that marks him out even before a ball is struck. The eight players were split into four pots for the draw, with Pot 1 reserved for No. 1 and No. 2 and Pot 2 for No. 3 and No. 4, before each player was assigned to a group for the round-robin stage.
The format is unforgiving. Each player will play three round-robin matches, and only the top two players from each group advance to the semifinals before the winners meet in the final. That structure means the opening days matter immediately, especially in a field that includes four debutants and two players trying to steady seasons defined by very different injuries and returns.
Jannik Sinner is absent after a right knee injury kept him off the court since his Wimbledon title this summer, while Carlos Alcaraz returned from a right wrist injury at the U.S. Open and has won two tournaments in a row coming into Turin. Ben Shelton and Daniil Medvedev complete the field, giving the draw enough strength that every result can alter the shape of the week before the knockout rounds even begin.
For Jódar, the question now is not whether he belongs in the field; the draw has already answered that. The more revealing test is whether a 20-year-old who has already made one remarkable leap can turn this opening chance into something more than a debut story.
