February 9, 2025

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MORE TENNIS THAN YOU'LL EVER NEED

WTA Rankings Report – As of Oct. 7, 2024

(WTATV)

WTA 1000s wrapping up in Beijing – an extended, two-week event – and starting up in Wuhan means a lot of points are on the table right now.

Wuhan, with one third the prize money and a smaller 56-player draw, still has the same number of points as the Premier 5 and Premier Mandatory categories were merged to make up the 1000 category, even if the disparities in prize money remain the same.

Iga Swiatek, who made the decision to skip Beijing and Wuhann (with a potential 2000 points on offer) as she makes a coaching change, drops 1,100 points this Monday. And she’s still over 1,000 points ahead of Aryna Sabalenka at No. 2.

There are two weeks’ worth of results going up on Monday because of the length of the Beijing tournament. So plenty of moves.

The men are in the middle of their two-weeker in Shanghai. So, like the women last week, they won’t have an updated list this Monday.

For the complete, updated WTA rankings for Monday, click here.

 

Coco Gauff (USA): No. 6 =========> No. 4 (A confidence-building week for Gauff, who wins the WTA 1000 in Beijing at the end of a long 12-day slog. She had a routine time of if in the final against Karolina Muchova, who didn’t offer up much resistance)(Wuhan 1st-round opponent: Bye)

Paula Badosa (ESP): No. 19 =========> No. 15 (A great week for Badosa, who reached the Beijing semis and lost to the eventual winner, Gauff. It’s as high as she has been in the rankings since just before the 2023 Australian Open)(Wuhan 1st-round opponent: [PR] Ajla Tomljanovic).

(Manuela Davies/USTA)

Donna Vekic (CRO): No. 20 =========> No. 18 (Vekic lost in the third round in Beijing, so it wasn’t the tournament she probably hoped to have. But the points she earned, and the drops from others, mean she’s at a career high ranking this week. A great renaissance season)(Wuhan 1st-round opponent: Elise Mertens).

Mirra Andreeva (RUS): No. 22 =========> No. 19 (It was a grumpy week – and a grumpy loss in the quarterfinals of Beijing to No. 5 seed Zheng Qinwen. But the silver lining is that Andreeva, still just 17, is into the top 20 in the WTA rankings for the first time in her career)(Wuhan 1st-round opponent: [WC] Wang Xiyu).

Madison Keys (USA): No. 24 =========> No. 20 (A shoulder injury has hampered Keys in 2024 and kept her out of action at times. But her fourth-round effort in Beijing gets her back into the top 20 after falling out for a few weeks after the US Open)(Wuhan 1st-round opponent: [9] Beatriz Haddad Maia).

(WTATV)

Karolina Muchova (CZE): No. 49 =========> No. 31 (Another great tournament for Muchova, who gets close to the top 30 after making the Beijing final and can certainly aspire to being a seed at the Australian Open. That’s better news for her opponents, because there’s no more dangerous floater around women’s tennis at the moment)(Wuhan 1st-round opponent: [Q] Moyuka Uchijima).

Rebecca Sramkova (SVK): No. 61 =========> No. 53 (Sramkova, 27, arrived at the WTA 250 in Monastir a month ago ranked No. 136. After making the Monastic final, jetting to Thailand, winning that tournament – her first career WTA title – and then qualifying in Beijing and making the third round, she’s just 25 points out of the top 50.

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Naomi Osaka (JPN): No. 73 =========> No. 58 (Another jump for Osaka, who made the fourth round in Beijing. She’s not playing in Wuhan, but you’d expect her at both events in Japan, the country she represents and where the majority of her sponsorship dollars come from).

Clara Tauson (DEN): No. 72 =========> No. 62 (It feels like Tauson has been in ranking purgatory forever – but she’s still just 21. She lost in the second round in Beijing. But she went to Hong Kong to play the WTA 125 there the second week and reached the final).

Yuliia Starodubtseva (UKR): No. 115 =========> No. 79 (Starodubtseva, at 24, has had a career-altering run in Asia. She qualified and made the quarterfinals in Beijing – seven matches and a leap into the top 100 for the first time ever. She won’t add to it in Wuhan; the Ukrainian lost in the final round of qualifying).

(Jason Chan/Clicks Images)

Ajla Tomljanovic (AUS): No. 107 =========> No. 86 (Tomljanovic, 31, has had a tough time with injuries since that famous night on Arthur Ashe Stadium two years ago when she ended Serena Williams’ Hall of Fame career. But she’s slowly getting back; she used her protected ranking to play Beijing, but lost in the first round. After the commute to the WTA 125 in Hong Kong – she won, to get back into the top 100 for the first time since Aug. 2023. Last October, she was at No. 593)(Wuhan 1st-round opponent: [14] Paula Badosa).

Sara Bejlek (CZE): No. 148 =========> No. 125 (Still just 18, the diminutive Czech wins the ITF in Sibenik and makes a nice leap in the rankings).

(Andrew Ong/USTA)

Iva Jovic (USA): No. 290 =========> No. 216 (Still just 16 and still weighing whether or not to go the college route – she really should – Jovic won a $60K ITF in Berkeley, and won a similar event in the San Diego area this week. All of this will easily get her into the Australian Open qualifying even if she might be there anyway to play the juniors).

Zhang Shuai (CHN): No. 595 =========> No. 250 (Of all the places and opponents against whom to end her mythic 24-match losing streak in singles, Zhang picked Beijing, in the homeland she didn’t even see for three years during COVID – which was one of the reasons, psyhologically, she fell into such a deep slump. She did even better than that; she got to the quarterfinals).

Cadence Brace (CAN): No. 457 =========> No. 394 (Brace, a 19-year-old Canadian who’s decided to take the US college route this fall, qualified and made the semifinals of the ITF in Templeton, Calif. two week ago).

Ashley Kratzer (USA): No. 9999 =========> No. 732 (The 25-year-old American, who finished serving a four-year anti-doping suspension at the end of March and got back into the grind, qualified and made the final of a small ITF in San Rafael, Calif. a few weeks ago. She also won a round at the Rancho Santa Fe ITF last week. And the 33 points earned get her officially back on the computer. Kratzer’s career high was No. 200 back in Aug. 2018).

Maria Sakkari (GRE): No. 17 =========> No. 22 (Sakkari, shelved with a shoulder injury, hasn’t played since retiring in the first round of the US Open. She falls out of the top 20 for the first time the pandemic hit in March 2020. It’s been impressive, in a very average season during which she ditched not one but two coaches, that she stayed in the top 20 as long as she did. She drops points from making the quarterfinals in Beijing a year ago – when it was a one-week event).

Liudmila Samsonova (RUS): No. 15 =========> No. 23 (Samsonova, who just in the second – her opening round – in Beijing, drops points from making the final there a year ago – she beat five top-50 players, three of them in the top 20 and the other two Parks and Kostyuk, on the way to that final. She, too, is out of the top 20)(Wuhan 1st-round opponent: Magda Linette).

(Tennis Canada/Peter Power)

Ons Jabeur (TUN): No. 21 =========> No. 29 (Another casualty of a bad shoulder and absent since losing in the first round in Toronto to Naomi Osaka, Jabeur is missing the Asian Swing and she coughs up seven spots after her points from winning the 500 in Ningbo and making the secound round in Beijing fall off).

Caroline Garcia (FRA): No. 36 =========> No. 44 (Garcia has ended her season. And she drops the points from points from making the quarters in Tokyo and Beijing a year ago. But she’s looking big-picture on this one).

Veronika Kudermetova (RUS): No. 39 =========> No. 63 (Just when it appeared Kudermetova was finding her form again, she is dealt a big blow as her points from winning Tokyo and making the third round in Beijing a year ago fall off. She made the third round in Beijing again, but it’s a 96-draw tournament this year and it wasn’t enough to stem the damage. On the plus side, she made the doubles final)(Wuhan 1st-round opponent: Marie Bouzkova).

A year ago, Kudermetova won Tokyo. This year, it’s a big falloff in the rankings.

Petra Martic (CRO): No. 102 =========> No. 118 (The 33-year-old from Croatia may have put herself out of contention to get straight into Melbourne, as she loses in the first round of an ITF in Sibenik. Alongside that, she dropped points from her results on the main tour’s Asian swing a year ago).

Linda Fruhvirtova (CZE): No. 139 =========> No. 181 (Fruhvirtova, the older of the two sisters at 19, got a lot of hype when she first came on tour. But the opponents have scouted her a little better and even though she hasn’t missed any time, the ranking is dropping. She lost in the first round of qualifying in both Beijing and Wuhan, and in the first round of the WTA 125 in Hong Kong. As she took on the WTA Tour level full time, she hasn’t won a match since July. Her points from the Ningbo semis a year ago fall off).

Vera Zvonareva (RUS): No. 330 =========> No. 465 (Zvonareva is all but retired, working as a coach in the Middle East even if she shows up occasionally to play doubles. She drops her points from making the Ningbo 500 quarters a year ago).

Bouchard at the Rogers Cup in Montreal in 2016.

Eugenie Bouchard (CAN): No. 983 =========> No. 985 (For what it’s worth, the 30-year-old is still on the WTA rankings computer. She has 18 points; 16 of them came from that ITF she played in Florida in May, and the other two from losing her first-round qualifying match in Toronto).

Moves for Katherine Sebov, Victoria Mboko and Kayla Cross on the ITF circuit.

The Cana-Kiwis are No. 2 and No. 3 with Gabriela Dabrowski moving up a spot. And Italians Jasmine Paolini and Sara Errani leap up into the top 10.

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