Injuries have momentarily halted what already looks like a generational rivalry between Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner, allowing another men’s tennis player—Alexander Zverev at Roland-Garros in June—to capture a Grand Slam singles title for the first time since 2023. But even when the two young aces can’t make it onto the court, they are locked in a battle for financial supremacy.

The 23-year-old Alcaraz continues to have the edge with his off-court earnings, raking in an estimated $38 million over the last 12 months from endorsements, appearances, exhibitions and other business endeavors to beat Sinner’s estimated $35 million. Factor in prize money, however, and it is the 25-year-old Italian who comes out on top, bringing in an estimated $58 million in total pretax income dating to the 2025 U.S. Open—about $4 million better than the Spanish superstar’s estimated $53.7 million.

Sinner, who is No. 1 in the ATP Tour’s singles rankings, is only the fourth player to claim the top spot on Forbes’ annual tennis earnings list across its 19-year history, dethroning Alcaraz, the two-time reigning financial champion. (Before that, Novak Djokovic led the ranking in 2023, and Roger Federer had a stranglehold on No. 1 for 15 straight years until he retired in 2022.) Perhaps most impressive, Sinner’s on-court total of $23 million—including ATP prize money from the past 12 months as well as a bonus he received from the tour—is the best figure ever to appear on the Forbes list, even though he took a month off before Wimbledon and has been sidelined since by a knee injury.

Sinner will now miss the U.S. Open, which begins on Sunday, creating another opening for the 29-year-old Zverev, who capitalized on Alcaraz’s absence at this year’s French Open. That result broke a streak of nine straight majors at which Sinner or Alcaraz had secured the singles title and pushed Zverev’s 12-month income to an estimated $18.7 million, which lands him among the world’s ten highest-paid tennis players for the first time since 2019, at No. 9.

Together, the sport’s ten top earners collected an estimated $333 million over the past year, up 17% from 2025’s $285 million and just behind 2020’s $343 million haul.

That year’s record total was buoyed by a career-best $106 million showing from Federer, and his decision to hang up his racket in 2022, along with Rafael Nadal’s retirement in 2024, has deprived the list of one of the steadiest sources of income in sports, with Federer tallying $1.1 billion in pretax earnings while still active and becoming a billionaire last year. But tennis’ financial ranking received an unexpected bump this year when Serena Williams returned to the court after a nearly four-year layoff. The 44-year-old legend—who decided not to play singles at this year’s U.S. Open as a wild card but competed in mixed doubles this week with Alcaraz and will enter women’s doubles with her sister Venus—has racked up an estimated $40.1 million in income over the past year to come in at No. 3, behind Sinner and Alcaraz. The vast majority of that cash is from her endorsements and other business ventures—Williams has earned just $131,932 in prize money this year, having played in only four tournaments leading up to the Open.

The inclusion of Williams helps raise the list’s cutoff to $17.4 million—set by Elena Rybakina, more than $3 million beyond 2025’s record high of $14.3 million—and ensures that there are more women (six) than men (four) in the top ten for the first time in the Forbes tennis ranking’s history. In another sign of the momentum in the women’s game, Coco Gauff—the world’s highest-paid female athlete in each of the past two years—has been surpassed not only by Williams but also by Aryna Sabalenka, who slots in at No. 4 in the overall ranking with an estimated $36.1 million, edging Gauff’s $35.5 million.

Those results don’t mean that male and female tennis players are on equal financial footing. Men have historically had better access to endorsement deals, and while the four Grand Slam events have long offered the same winner’s check to their men’s and........

© Forbes