Rafa Jódar moved closer to the ATP top 10 with a commanding victory over Alejandro Tabilo at the Cincinnati Masters. On August 17, the Madrid-born player beat Tabilo 6-2, 6-1 in 75 minutes to reach the round of 16. Jódar is now just 654 points behind Taylor Fritz, who holds the final spot in the elite group. The Real Federación Española de Tenis (RFET) also lists Jódar as a Cincinnati round-of-16 player. The win added to a season in which Jódar had already secured 49 victories, five more than world number one Jannik Sinner.
This season, Jódar has reached the final in Washington and the semifinals in Montreal. His rapid ascent puts him on the verge of making history: if he enters the top 10 in Cincinnati, he could surpass Boris Becker’s 1985 record for the fastest jump from the top 100 to the top 10. Becker set the record in 210 days. Jódar entered the ATP elite on March 30, so only 140 days have passed since then. The RFET’s 2026 profile records a career-best ranking of No. 11 on August 10, alongside a quarterfinal run at the Rome Masters. At Wimbledon and Miami, where he came through qualifying, he reached the third round.
To break Becker’s record, Jódar would need to win the Cincinnati title, but he will have another mathematical chance at the US Open, which runs from August 30 to September 13. As a seeded player at the final Grand Slam of the year, he is also closing in on a place at the ATP Finals in Turin, reserved for the season’s top eight. At the Cincinnati stage, Jódar sat seventh in the Race 2026 standings with 2,499 points, just 81 behind Daniil Medvedev. His position changed later in the season: subsequent standings placed Jódar ninth after a deep run at another Masters 1000 event.
Jódar’s next opponent in Cincinnati was Flavio Cobolli, the seventh seed and a recent Roland Garros finalist. They were meeting for the first time, and Cobolli won 4-6, 7-6(3), 6-3 on August 19. Cobolli reached the match after beating Tommy Paul and Miomir Kecmanović. He later advanced to the semifinal, where Arthur Fils defeated him 6-3, 6-4. Jódar had dominated Tabilo from the opening game, breaking serve early and winning five of the first six games. The Spaniard had also beaten Tabilo in the Washington Open semifinals.
The second set against Tabilo followed a similar pattern: Jódar conceded only one game and sealed victory in 75 minutes. Only Carlos Alcaraz and Ben Shelton had reached the Cincinnati round of 16 before age 20 in the past decade, placing Jódar among a rare group. Weather also disrupted the tournament, as highlighted in recent coverage of rain delays affecting Spanish players in Cincinnati.
The ATP ranking system rewards consistent performance at high-level tournaments, with points accumulated over a rolling 52-week period. Jódar’s rise has been built over several seasons. His year-end ranking climbed from No. 1,751 in 2023 to No. 896 in 2024, then reached No. 168 in 2025. By October 2026, he had climbed to No. 11, one place outside the top 10. His later Masters 1000 final run included a win over Daniil Medvedev. He also beat Casper Ruud and Jiří Lehečka during that run. With the US Open and the ATP Finals approaching, his Cincinnati results formed part of a broader season-long climb.
