Why Aryna Sabalenka overtook Iga Swiatek for world primary within the WTA rankings

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 received 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 begin her ninth profession week because the top-ranked ladies’s tennis participant on this planet.

However neither participant took half in a event final week, so what occurred?

Why did Swiatek and Sabalenka lose their rating factors?

Beneath 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 at present (Monday, October 21), with Swiatek having performed two 500-level occasions and Sabalenka 4:

Neither participant can now meet the obligatory determine of six, in order that they have begun to lose factors. Swiatek’s worst results of the season to this point 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:

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.

Who will likely be world No. 1 on the finish of the 12 months?

This can nonetheless be determined on the WTA Finals. The percentages are at present 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 received the WTA Finals in 2023, successful 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 considered one 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:

Has Swiatek overhauled a rankings deficit earlier than?

Sure, and she or he did it towards 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 wished that rating,” the American advised a information convention after their closing. “You possibly can inform by the way in which she was competing right here… She was, like at present, crushing individuals.”

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 prime of the rankings.

Aryna Sabalenka is world No. 1 for the second time in her profession. (Wang He / Getty Photos)

“I hope she’ll work out the coach scenario and she or he’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 will play towards one another there.”

The “coach scenario”, through which Swiatek parted firm with Tomas Wiktorowski with whom she received 4 Grand Slam titles, has certainly been found out. 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.

(High photographs: Getty Photos)