A record-breaking rookie completes tennis' elite eight in Turin

Eight men gathered in Turin on Thursday for the draw that will set the groups for the Nitto ATP Finals, the men's tennis season finale that runs at the Inalpi Arena from Nov. 15 to 22. Six of the eight are familiar faces from the top of the rankings. The seventh and eighth are not, and one of them has produced the most improbable qualification in the event's recent history: Rafael Jódar, a 20-year-old Spaniard who was playing college tennis in Virginia a year ago and had not contested a single ATP Tour match.

Jódar's arrival completes a field that also includes Alexander Zverev, the new world No. 1 and a two-time champion of the event; Carlos Alcaraz, chasing his first title at the event; and Daniil Medvedev, Ben Shelton, Flavio Cobolli, Arthur Fils and Frances Tiafoe. Jannik Sinner, the two-time defending champion, is absent after ending his season in October because of a right knee injury, the first time since his breakthrough that the Italian will not play the tournament he has dominated.

A debut season without precedent

Jódar began 2026 ranked 168th in the world. He finished the qualifying Race to Turin with 3,234 points and the eighth and final spot, a climb that, according to the tournament's own tracking of the race, has no real precedent: the previous lowest starting ranking for a player who went on to qualify belonged to Mariano Puerta, who began 2005 at No. 133. Along the way Jódar won his first tour-level title at the Marrakech 250 event, reached the quarterfinals at Roland Garros, made his first Masters 1000 final in Shanghai and beat two top-10 players, Alex de Minaur and Medvedev, before reaching his first ATP 500 final in Washington in August, a result that first pushed him into realistic contention for Turin.

His place was not settled by his own racket. Jódar lost in the first round of the Rolex Paris Masters to Casper Ruud, and his qualification instead turned on results elsewhere in the draw: de Minaur falling to Tomás Martín Etcheverry, Tommy Paul losing to Shelton, and finally Alcaraz's quarterfinal win over Taylor Fritz on Nov. 6, which eliminated the last man who could have overtaken him. Jódar did not need to pick up a racket to book his debut in Turin.

From a Virginia dorm room to the ATP's top table

A year earlier, Jódar was an undergraduate at the University of Virginia, where he was named the ITA's national rookie of the year after arriving on the strength of a US Open boys' singles title. He turned professional only at the end of 2025, when he appeared as a wildcard practice partner, then a direct entrant, at the Next Gen ATP Finals in Jeddah, the tour's event for players 20 and under. According to the Next Gen ATP Finals' own account of his season, he is only the third player, after Stefanos Tsitsipas and Alcaraz, to go directly from that junior-flavored event to the senior Finals the following year.

Jódar has been candid that he does not see this season as an arrival so much as a first step. Asked about reaching Turin earlier in the year, he kept his ambitions in proportion.

"I think it is a very cool event and hopefully I can be part of it," Jódar said, adding that his approach has simply been to go "match by match, tournament by tournament," and that "if you want to be a great tennis player, you have to be on Tour for many years."

He has credited his father, who has traveled with him through much of the season, with keeping that perspective intact, telling the ATP that his father's advice has been to "be humble and not think you are someone who you are really not."

A shifting order in Turin

Jódar's qualification, alongside Alcaraz's, means two Spaniards have booked direct places in the Finals for the first time since Rafael Nadal and David Ferrer did so in 2015. It also arrives as the men's game absorbs Sinner's absence: the 25-year-old, who beat Alcaraz in last year's final and has not played since a right knee problem flared after Wimbledon, will miss the season-ending event he has won in each of the past two years. Zverev, who took over the No. 1 ranking in Sinner's absence from the tour, arrives in Turin as the man with the most to defend, while Alcaraz is still without a title at the one significant event that has eluded him.

• Jódar started 2026 ranked 168th and qualified for Turin with 3,234 Race points, the lowest starting rank on record for a Finals qualifier.
• He is the third player to reach the Finals the year after playing the Next Gen ATP Finals, following Tsitsipas and Alcaraz.
• Jódar and Ben Shelton are the first two former college players in the field since 2018.
• Four of the eight singles qualifiers — Cobolli, Fils, Tiafoe and Jódar — are making their Finals debuts.

The tournament's round-robin format splits the eight into two groups of four, with the top two from each advancing to a cross-bracket semifinal, and the winner of each group facing the runner-up from the other. Play runs through Nov. 20, with semifinals on the 21st and the final on the 22nd. Thursday's draw, streamed live from Turin starting at noon local time, set those groupings and, by extension, Jódar's first opponents at the level he reached faster than any man ranked as low as he was a year ago.

For Jódar, simply being on the Inalpi Arena practice courts this week is itself the story line Spanish tennis has been waiting to write since Nadal's retirement left a gap at the top of the men's game. Whether he wins a single round-robin match in his group or not, his qualification itself has already been described by Spanish outlets as uncharted territory for a player in his first full season on tour. The round-robin matches begin Sunday, and Turin will find out quickly whether his season has one more surprise left in it.