Jannik Sinner's retirement blows Shanghai Masters title race wide open

Sinner's Shanghai Masters title defence is officially over after the world No. 2was  forced to retire due to cramping against Tallon Griekspoor on Sunday.

Brutal conditions at the Masters 1000 event have troubled many in recent days, and second seed Sinner is the latest to fall victim, with the Italian 3-2 down in the deciding set when he was forced to call it quits due to his ailing physical condition.

Sinner's withdrawal leaves the tournament wide-open in terms of title contenders, but also strikes a potentially hammer blow to his hopes of challenging Carlos Alcaraz's world No. 1 ranking by the end of 2025.

Sinner's triumph at the prestigious Masters 1000 event, defeating Novak Djokovic in the final, saw him win a staggering 1,000 ranking points from the event 12 months ago.

However, he will now lose the vast majority of those points after only making it to the third round in 2025.

By reaching the round of 32, Sinner will take 50 points from this year's tournament, a 950-point decrease from 2024.

That will mean the four-time Grand Slam champion drops from 10,950 points to 10,000 points when the ATP Rankings update next Monday.

Sinner still has a comfortable cushion as the world No. 2 - but his chances of replacing Alcaraz as the world No. 1 by the end of 2025 look all but over.

Dropping 200 quarter-final points himself after withdrawing from the event pre-tournament, Alcaraz will fall to 11,340 ranking points post-Shanghai.

However, Sinner's third-round retirement means that the Spaniard will now have a 1,340-point cushion over his closest rival in the ATP Rankings.

Following his China Open triumph last week, a successful Shanghai title defence followed by victory at the Vienna Open would have seen the Italian regain the world No. 1 ranking.

But, that has now proven not to be the case, and the odds look stacked against the world No 2.

Sinner has earned a staggering 8,500 ranking points this year - including his Shanghai points from this week - but that still puts him significantly behind Alcaraz, who has earned 11,040 points so far in 2025.

That is a gap of 2,540 points between the two, a gap that the Italian can technically still close - but only if everything falls his way.

Sinner can earn 500 points for triumphing in Vienna later this month, 1,000 points for triumphing at the final Masters event of the season in Paris, and then 1,500 points for an unbeaten campaign at the ATP Finals.

That would constitute a haul of 3,000 points and an overall season tally of 11,500, potentially enough to overhaul world No. 1 Alcaraz.

However, even if Sinner went the rest of the year unbeaten and won all three titles, Alcaraz will still need to claim just 461 points across his remaining tournaments to remain as the No. 1 by the end of the season.

The Spaniard is not playing an indoor 500-level event but will be in Paris Indoors and ATP Finals action, and - with 200 points available for an individual round-robin win at the ATP Finals - seems likely to be able to hold off Sinner.

Alcaraz's hopes will be boosted further if the Italian is unable to win all three events, and he has significantly fewer points to defend across the rest of the year than his closest rival.

The Spaniard has just 300 points to defend across Paris and the year-end championships, while Sinner has a full 1,500 points to defend as the reigning ATP Finals champion.

Sinner's year-end No. 1 hopes are not officially over, but this Shanghai retirement has left his chances hanging by the thinnest of threads.

READ MORE: SA Paralympian Puseletso Mabote delighted to be World Champion