The tennis world awoke to a shock on Monday, with Aryna Sabalenka changing Iga Swiatek as No. 1 within the WTA rankings.
Sabalenka, who has gained two Grand Slam titles in a sterling season, has been engaged in a battle for supremacy with Swiatek — who has a Grand Slam title of her personal, and 5 titles in 2024 to Sabalenka’s 4 — all 12 months. It was anticipated to run till the season-ending WTA Tour Finals in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, subsequent month, the place Swiatek is defending champion.
As an alternative, Swiatek misplaced 120 rating factors within the newest replace, and Sabalenka misplaced 10, resulting in her leapfrogging her rival to start out her ninth profession week because the top-ranked ladies’s tennis participant on the planet.
However neither participant took half in a event final week, so what occurred?
Why did Swiatek and Sabalenka lose their rating factors?
Underneath WTA guidelines, gamers should enter and play six WTA 500-level tournaments per season. If a participant is concerned in fewer than that, they lose the rating factors they earned from their worst outcomes of the season throughout all event classes as punishment — not simply from the 500-level occasions they did play in.
The Pan Pacific Open in Tokyo is the one WTA 500 occasion left this season and that begins right this moment (Monday, October 21), with Swiatek having performed two 500-level occasions and Sabalenka 4:
| Participant | WTA 500 | Consequence |
|---|---|---|
Iga Swiatek | United Cup | F |
Stuttgart | SF | |
Aryna Sabalenka | Brisbane | F |
Stuttgart | QF | |
Berlin | QF | |
Washington DC | SF |
Neither participant can now meet the obligatory determine of six, so that they have begun to lose factors. Swiatek’s worst results of the season thus far is her fourth-round defeat to Russian world No. 28 Ekaterina Alexandrova on the Miami Open in March, which is a WTA 1000. She earned 120 factors for reaching that stage of the event.
Sabalenka’s worst results of 2024 is her second-round defeat to Croatian world No. 19 Donna Vekic at February’s Dubai Tennis Championships, additionally a WTA 1000, for which she gained 10 factors. Eradicating these factors erases Swiatek’s lead over Sabalenka, and takes the latter to the summit:
| Week | Iga Swiatek | Aryna Sabalenka |
|---|---|---|
October 14 | 9785 | 9716 |
October 21 | 9665 | 9706 |
Will Swiatek and Sabalenka lose additional factors?
Sure. Their next-worst outcomes will likely be scrapped from their factors totals within the subsequent rankings replace after the Pan Pacific Open concludes subsequent Sunday. Swiatek will lose 130 factors for reaching the third spherical of both the Australian Open or Wimbledon and Sabalenka her 65 for attending to the identical stage in Miami.
GO DEEPER
Aryna Sabalenka needed to overhaul Iga Swiatek – to do it, she needed to decelerate
Who will likely be world No. 1 on the finish of the 12 months?
This may nonetheless be determined on the WTA Finals. The chances are at the moment in Sabalenka’s favor due to how extensively Swiatek outperformed her final 12 months — an initially unusual concept that’s on the coronary heart of the tennis rating system.
Swiatek gained the WTA Finals in 2023, profitable all of her matches in straight units and thrashing Jessica Pegula 6-1, 6-0 within the closing in Cancun, Mexico, to earn 1500 factors. Sabalenka misplaced one in every of her matches within the round-robin stage (to Pegula) after which misplaced to Swiatek within the semifinals, incomes 625 factors. Making use of the pending level penalty, and the lack of final 12 months’s factors from the WTA Finals, Swiatek must surmount a deficit of 1,046 factors in Riyadh:
| Participant | Factors | Rating |
|---|---|---|
Aryna Sabalenka | 9016 | #1 |
Iga Swiatek | 7970 | #2 |
Has Swiatek overhauled a rankings deficit earlier than?
Sure, and he or she did it in opposition to Sabalenka, this time final 12 months. Going into the WTA Finals, Sabalenka was world No. 1, with a lead of 630 factors over Swiatek. However Swiatek then destroyed the sector, dropping simply 20 video games in 10 units. Pegula, who confronted her within the closing, was clear as to why: “She clearly actually needed that rating,” the American informed a information convention after their closing. “You can inform by the way in which she was competing right here… She was, like right this moment, crushing folks.”
After Swiatek withdrew from the WTA 1000 China Open in September (the place she would have been defending champion, and so dropped 1,100 factors), Sabalenka stated that she hoped they might face one another once more throughout the season of their battle to complete high of the rankings.
Aryna Sabalenka is world No. 1 for the second time in her profession. (Wang He / Getty Pictures)
“I hope she’ll determine the coach scenario and he or she’ll be again within the finals in her finest form,” Sabalenka stated in a information convention on the Wuhan Open, additionally in China. “Hopefully we are able to play in opposition to one another there.”
The “coach scenario”, by which Swiatek parted firm with Tomas Wiktorowski with whom she gained 4 Grand Slam titles, has certainly been discovered. Swiatek has since employed Wim Fissette, who coached Naomi Osaka, Kim Clijsters and Angelique Kerber to Grand Slam titles. All three are former world No. 1s.
(Prime images: Getty Pictures)
