There was one way Daniil Medvedev could have overtaken Carlos Alcaraz as the world number two on the ATP Tour, and that was to win the Australian Open, but that didn't happen.
Medvedev had a pretty strong Australian Open as he bested several great players en route to the final. The Russian maybe didn't expect to be there because last year's event ended early for him, thanks to a stunning performance by Sebastian Korda.
This run wasn't easy as he totalled 31 sets in total en route to the final, which is the most ever played by a player at a Grand Slam event, but he made the final. By putting himself in the final, Medvedev got pretty close to emerging as the second-best player in the world on Monday's rankings.
At the time of the final, Carlos Alcaraz was ahead of the Russians by 490 points, which would have been not enough if Medvedev had won the event. The difference between winning and losing in the final in terms of points is 700.
The winner of the event gets 2000 points, while the runner-up gets 1300 points, so if Medvedev won the event, he would have found himself ahead of Alcaraz by about 210 points.
Unfortunately for the Russian, he was beaten by Jannik Sinner in 5 sets which earned the Italian 2000 points and Medvedev only 1300.
That left him with a total of 8765 points while Alcaraz remained second with 9255. This is obviously an ongoing battle as as Novak Djokovic is not far off with 9855 points, so all there of them will battle it out in the coming weeks and months.
We'll see what happens, but Djokovic likely has the least chance of retaining it because he won't play as much compared to these two. On the other hand, Medvedev has a really good chance of becoming the world no. 1 again because Alcaraz defends a lot of points.
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