Jannik Sinner remains unbeaten in 2024 and will rise to a new career-high ranking after claiming the Rotterdam Open title with a straight sets win over Alex De Minaur on Sunday.
Sinner has won his last 15 singles matches on the bounce and will leapfrog former world No 1 Daniil Medvedev into third spot on the ATP Rankings on Monday.
Medvedev had opted not to defend his title in Rotterdam after a busy start to his campaign which opened the door for Sinner to make rankings history for Italy.
He will become the first Italian man to reach the No 3 ranking since the system was brought into the sport.
Sinner was guaranteed to snatch the third spot by reaching the final but would have had to wait another week to take the position if he had not bested the Australian in Rotterdam.
Medvedev will lose more ground on Sinner next week as he drops a further 250 points as he also avoids a title defence in Doha while he is spending time with his young family.
Sinner fired up with his patented clean-hitting, aggressive style of tennis to blow the Australian away in Rotterdam.
Sinner would blast a total of 23 winners and recover from squandering a break in both sets to earn his 15th tour-level win in a row in a little over two hours on court.
“My team, we did a really good job a few weeks ago and now we made a very good job here,” Sinner said.
“I am really proud with the level that I played throughout this whole week. We have been in tough situations but we handled it the right way. We will always try to improve, it is the most important.”
He now holds a perfect 7-0 record in his ATP head-to-head series against De MInaur.
The Italian won his third consecutive ATP 500 title at the indoor hard competition by dropping just one set while playing with confidence and purpose all week after his great success at the Australian Open.
The Next Gen ATP Finals champion from 2019 has already won 12 titles at the tour level and has won 32 of his last 34 matches. His only losses have come in the Nitto ATP Finals final match against Novak Djokovic and in a clash with rising American star Ben Shelton in Shanghai.
Monday will also see De Minaur rise to a career-high No 9 in the ATP Rankings. The Australian has a 7-8 record in championship match play now after losing the Rotterdam showdown.