The 2026 men’s tennis season has little to recommend it. Anticlimactic, devoid of Sincaraz clashes, and ultimately presided over by the whiniest and weakest world No. 1 in recent memory. But if you’re looking for one interesting takeaway from the year, consider the rise of young Rafael Jodar. After two years playing at the University of Virginia and competing in Challenger events, he decided to go pro in 2026. What happened over the next few months is both a testament to the strength of college tennis and perhaps a sign that his conversion to the pros was overdue. He went straight to the top. Jodar is the only player in the history of the ATP rankings to ascend into the top 10 during the same season as his first ATP tour-level event. Depending on how the rest of Paris goes—he’s out already, but other players’ performance will determine his fate—he might end his rookie season at the ATP Finals later this month. We’ve never seen a rise quite like this. And somehow I’ve barely written a word about it to date. But I have been keeping tabs on an intriguing subplot.

Jodar is a lanky figure with square shoulders, a somewhat chilly disposition, and an austere approach to staffing. In an era of overgrown superteams, he takes the match court with a single person in his box: his dad, who is also his coach. He has superb raw materials to work with. The 20-year-old appears to be the first player younger than Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz to arrive on tour with their essential characteristics: balanced excellence on both serve and return, ability to produce offense from defensive court positions, both ground strokes outfitted with pace and rally tolerance. Although Jodar shares a flag with Alcaraz, it’s Sinner he resembles more in style—or, as Daniil Medvedev observed after a recent loss, it’s the prototype, Novak Djokovic himself. At the core of these comparisons is an unimpeachable, airtight baseline game.

He’s also cultivating his own style. As the analyst Matt Willis has observed, Jodar has a very unusual risk profile in his return games, attempting to inflict immediate damage with his first-serve returns, and it pays off handsomely, putting him in the top 10 on tour in percentage return points won. Meanwhile, the serve still has room to improve, in terms of keeping the ball tighter to the lines, and it’s the clearest area of improvement for him. But his existing skill set is already plenty potent, and the proof is in his results. Jodar notched his first tour-level win at the Australian Open; by the end of clay season, he was already inside the top 30. He added to his hoard with a few strong hard-court performances in the summer and fall, and now he might head to Turin. It’s unfortunate that my one time seeing him live was probably the nadir of his season: a haphazard loss to world No. 124 Bu Yunchaokete in the first round of the US Open, in which he swapped out his racquet constantly but couldn’t keep a ball in the court regardless.

Here now is the weird subplot of the Jodar breakout season. During his sudden rise to prominence, Jodar has revealed a bit of a temper. He’s been snippy and combative with physios, umpires, and journalists. Most infamously, he’s been waging some unexpected warfare: against the ball kids. Though (or perhaps because?) he is their generational peer, he has shown them little grace, clashing with them in several incidents, his plausible deniability evaporating a bit with each one. When he brushed against a ball girl at Roland-Garros, and she fell over, it was believable that she had in fact tripped on a tarp, as Jodar claimed and alternate camera angles seemed to confirm. When a ball kid’s errant toss in Washington, D.C., hit Jodar, and the Spaniard turned and scowled back at him, perhaps that was just the ball kid exacting some revenge for his people. When in Shanghai Jodar barked at a towel kid—Dame ya la puta toalla—and got an unsportsmanlike conduct warning, tensions between the two camps were inflamed once more. What matchup are you anticipating most eagerly in 2027: Jodar vs. Sinner, or Jodar vs. teenage tournament volunteers?