The 2025 Canadian Open won’t feature tennis’ three most recent men’s Grand Slam champions as Jannik Sinner, Carlos Alcaraz and Novak Djokovic have opted to skip the event, but it does mean the door is ajar for perhaps another surprise winner.
The current Big Three on the ATP Tour, Sinner, Alcaraz and Djokovic, won’t play in Toronto due to injury and fatigue.
Last year, the unseeded Alexei Popyrin made the most of the Paris Games withdrawals as he defeated Andrey Rublev in the final to capture his maiden Masters trophy.
With the shiny trophy also came 1000 ATP Ranking points and Popyrin will slide down the rankings after the Canadian Open if he fails to defend his title. The Australian currently sits at No 26 in the Live Rankings with 2050 points.
He will drop to outside the top 50 once his 1,000 points from the 2024 title run drop off, but will then get a chance to regain points during every round at the Masters event.
But what about the other big-name players?
Although world No 1 Sinner doesn’t feature in the 2025 main draw, he competed 12 months ago and reached the quarter-final and he will drop 200 points.
The Italian sits atop the ATP Rankings with 12,030 points and will be on 11,830 after the event with Alcaraz a distant second on 8,600.
Alcaraz and Djokovic didn’t compete last year so they won’t drop any points, while Jack Draper lost in the first round and will lose 10 points.
The other seeded players who won’t play this year are Tommy Paul (50), Grigor Dimitrov (100) and Alexander Bublik (10).
Now for those who will feature at the 2025 edition, where Alexander Zverev will be the top seed.
The German lost in the quarter-final in 2024 so will drop 200 points while second seed Taylor Fritz will drop only 50 points.
The ranking system is a big more complicated for the next fortnight as players will also drop points from the 2024 Washington DC Open.
The ATP 250 event took place from July 29 until August 4, in 2024 ago while the Canadian Open was staged from August 6-12.
This year’s expanded tournament will run from July 27 until August 7 so points from Washington and Canada both fall in the 52-week rolling period.
Ben Shelton is one of those who will be affected as he earned 50 points at the 2024 Canadian Open, but will drop 250 in total as he reached the semi-final in DC (200 points) 12 months ago.
Last year’s runner-up Rublev will also be hit hard as he will drop 750 points (650 from Canada and 100 from Washington).
