The 23-year-old Spaniard holds four Grand Slam trophies, nine ATP Masters 1000 titles, and has reached world number one, but the year-end championship remains missing from his resume.
If he wins the tournament in 2026, he will become the third Spanish man to claim the singles title since the event began in 1970.
Manuel Orantes became the first Spanish player to lift the trophy in 1976. Orantes, whose sole Grand Slam singles title came at the 1975 US Open, went through a round-robin group in Houston that included Americans Eddie Dibbs and Roscoe Tanner alongside Poland’s Wojciech Fibak. After defeating Dibbs and Tanner while losing to Fibak, Orantes advanced to the semifinals, where he beat Harold Solomon 6-4, 6-3, 6-4.
In the final, Orantes faced Fibak again and avenged his earlier round-robin loss by winning 5-7, 6-2, 0-6, 7-6, 6-1. Nearly 22 years later, another Spaniard etched his name on the trophy when Álex Corretja made his debut at the event in 1998 and defeated compatriot Carlos Moyà 3-6, 3-6, 7-5, 6-3, 7-5 in the final.
“The players who get into this tournament are of a very high level, they are the best eight of the whole year; you arrive here with a lot of matches played during the season and you are feeling confident,” Corretja recalled to the ATP Tour website in 2020.
Corretja added that winning the Lyon tournament three weeks prior to the finals gave him the necessary belief that he could compete with anyone, leaving him physically and mentally prepared.
No Spanish player has won the ATP Finals singles title since Corretja’s victory in 1998. Rafael Nadal reached the final twice, losing to Roger Federer in 2010 and Novak Djokovic in 2013. Alcaraz advanced to the championship match in 2025, where he fell to Jannik Sinner.
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