Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer and co. must choose between teen star and Brit | Tennis | Sport
The 2025 ATP Awards nominees have been unveiled – and there’s been a change to some of the voting procedures this year. The men’s tour has announced that the 29 members of the No. 1 club – current and former players who have reached the top of the rankings, like Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal – get to vote in two categories.
Djokovic, Federer and co. will determine the winners of the Breakthrough of the Year Award – where nominees include teenage sensation Joao Fonseca and Britain’s Jack Draper – and the Stefan Edberg Sportsmanship Award.
The breakthrough category is new for this year and is awarded “to the player who made the biggest breakthrough on the ATP Tour this season”. Consideration is given to milestone wins, first titles, and significant jumps in the rankings. This year’s nominees are Draper, Fonseca, Jakub Mensik, and Valentin Vacherot.
Draper beat four top-15 players, including Carlos Alcaraz, to win his biggest title in Indian Wells this year. He also cracked the top 10 and reached finals in Madrid and Doha before an injury forced him to end his season early. Like Draper, Czech star Mensik went on a heroic run to win the Masters 1000 in Miami.
Starting the season just inside the world’s top 50, the 20-year-old beat three top-10 players, including Novak Djokovic in the final, to win the Miami Open and then reached a career-high of No. 16 in August. Fonseca, meanwhile, started the year upsetting ninth seed Andrey Rublev on his Grand Slam debut as a qualifier at the Australian Open.
A few weeks later, Fonseca lifted his first title at the Argentina Open. The 19-year-old also won the ATP 500 in Basel last month. He was ranked outside the top 140 when the season started and now sits at a career-high ranking of No. 24.
And Vacherot became the lowest-ranked Masters 1000 champion in history and the first player from Monaco to win an ATP Tour singles title when he was crowned the Shanghai Masters champion as a qualifier ranked at No. 204 in the world.
The 26-year-old was still nine spots outside of the qualifying draw when he landed in China, but made it in and stunned Alexander Bublik, Holger Rune and Djokovic on his way to the final, where he faced his own cousin, Arthur Rinderknech. Vacherot backed it up by reaching the Paris Masters quarter-final and cracked the world’s top 30.
Players in the No. 1 club will also decide the winners of the Stefan Edberg Sportsmanship Award, which “goes to the player who, throughout the year, conducted himself at the highest level of professionalism and integrity, who competed with his fellow players with the utmost spirit of fairness, and who promoted the game through his off-court activities.”
The three most recent winners, Grigor Dimitrov, Carlos Alcaraz and Casper Ruud, are nominated, along with Felix Auger-Aliassime. It will be up to the 29 players who have reached the top of the rankings to choose between the nominees in the two categories. As well as Djokovic, Federer and Nadal, the No. 1 club also includes the likes of Andy Murray, John McEnroe and Boris Becker.
