With Jannik Sinner (2019) and Carlos Alcaraz (2021), two later world number ones have already been crowned winners at the Next Gen Finals of the tennis tour’s greatest talents. With Stefanos Tsitsipas, another top 10 player achieved this in 2018 and with Andrey Rublev (2017) and Alex de Minaur (2018 and 2019), two other top 10 players at least reached the final. The importance of competition cannot therefore be denied. In 2025, a German youngster will be chasing the title for the first time: Justin Engel.
After 19-year-old Czech Jakub Mensik, number 19 in the ATP world rankings and actually the top favorite for the title, canceled his participation in the Next Gen Finals in Jeddah (December 17th to 20th) for medical reasons, DTB talent Justin Engel joined the eight-player field.
The number 187 in the world rankings from Germany was actually only number ten in the so-called Race to Jeddah, in which all players who are not older than 20 are listed. Since Menslik and the Brazilian Joa Fonseca are also missing out, the 18-year-old gets his chance.
Zverev declined to take part twice
In addition to Engel, who is the youngest participant, the US talents Learner Tien (number 28 in the world rankings) and Nishesh Basavareddy (167), Alexander Blockx (116) from Belgium, the Croatian Dino Prizmic (128), Martin Landaluce (134) and Rafael Jodar (168) from Spain as well as the Norwegian Nicolai Budkov Kjaer (136) are starting. After the cancellations of Mensik and Fonseca, Tien is the clear favorite.
The young talent competition was launched in 2017. At that time and a year later, Germany’s top star Alexander Zverev was also allowed to take part, but the Hamburg native did not take part.
The game is played in two groups of four, each game consists of five winning sets, but to win a round you only need four games. The top two players in each group advance to the semi-finals.
