Even with no tour-level tournaments last week, there still was some movement within this week’s WTA rankings. Points from the 2021 Adelaide 500 event dropped since it was staged the week following last year’s Australian Open.
Top 10 shakeup
Last year’s champion in Adelaide, Iga Swiatek, collected 470 rankings points with that win. With those points falling off, Swiatek’s ranking drops from No.4 to No.8.
Additionally, one week after making her Top 10 debut, American Danielle Collins dips to No.11, elevating Ons Jabeur back into the Top 10. Last year in Adelaide, Collins advanced to the quarterfinals, where she earned 100 points with wins against Zheng Saisai in the opening round followed by a win against top seed and wildcard Ashleigh Barty in the second round. Collins lost to Swiatek in the quarterfinals.
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Other players affected by the rankings drop include:
- 2021 Adelaide runner-up Belinda Bencic loses 305 points and falls out of this week’s Top 20, from No.19 to No.24.
- Coco Gauff, a semifinalist in Adelaide last year, drops to No.20 from No.17.
- Jil Teichmann reached the 2021 Adelaide semifinals as well and this week, her ranking drops from No.31 to No.35 as a result of losing 185 points.
- Australians Maddison Inglis and Storm Sanders both reached the main draw in Adelaide as qualifiers and both won their first-round, main-draw match. This week, Sanders falls 21 spots (from No.127 to No.148), while Inglis drops 14 spots to No.129 (from No.115).
Spain’s breakthroughs
With Swiatek dropping out of the Top 5, Spain’s Paula Badosa makes her Top 5 debut this week, at No.5. After winning the title in Sydney in the second week of the 2022 season, Badosa went on to reach the fourth round at the Australian Open, making the jump from No.9 (the week of Jan. 10) to No.5 this week.
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Fellow countrywoman Nuria Parrizas Diaz moved up one spot to a career-high No.50 and makes her Top 50 debut this week. Since making her Top 100 debut in August last year, Parrizas Diaz made her Grand Slam main-draw debut at the 2021 US Open, won a WTA 125 title at Columbus, Ohio, reached the quarterfinals at a WTA 250 event in Melbourne in the first week of the 2022 season and reached the third round at the Australian Open.
Badosa and Parrizas Diaz join Garbiñe Muguruza (No.6) and Sara Sorribes Tormo (No.32), giving Spain four women in the Top 50 for the first time in nearly 12 years (since the week of June 21, 2010).
Other notable movements
- Canada’s Leylah Fernandez makes her Top 20 debut by moving up two spots from No.21 to No.19.
- The biggest rankings jump this week belongs to Gabriela Knutson of the Czech Republic; she leaps 250 spots, climbing from No.1023 to No.773. Knutson, a former NCAA collegiate tennis player at Syracuse University, earned the jump by reaching the semifinals at W25 Loughborough, an ITF tournament staged from Jan. 24-30. Ranking points earned from W25 ITF level tournaments (and below) are added one week following the conclusion of play.
- On a similar note, last week, Brenda Fruhvirtova, at 14 years, 10 months old, became the youngest player to win a title on the ITF World Tennis Tour in more than six years. She emerged victorious in Argentina at W25 Tucuman. Currently ranked No.1078, she collected 50 points for her title, which will be added in next Monday’s rankings.
