Swiatek “penalized”, Aryna Sabalenka is the new No. 1 in the WTA rankings. The explanation for the new regulation

Change at the top of world women’s tennis. Since this morning the reign of is interrupted Iga Swiatek. The Pole, world no. 1 for 50 consecutive weeks (and overall leader of the WTA rankings for 125 weeks in total in her career), leaves the scepter to Aryna Sabalenka. The Belarusian, who had already come close to overtaking last week after her success at the ‘1000’ in Wuhan, did so this morning thanks to a particular mechanism in the ranking count. A rule that is controversial and which somehow also affected Sabalenka herself, albeit to a lesser extent. In fact, to bring the Belarusian back to number 1 – who had already been leader for 8 weeks starting from September 2023 – there is a “penalty” which impressed Iga Swiatek the most.

The rules introduced at the beginning of the new season in fact provided the obligatory nature for the women’s circuit to play at least 16 WTA events: 10 ‘1000’ category tournaments plus 6 ‘500’ category tournaments. Failure to comply with this requirement would have cost the players the worst result obtained during the season.

Swiatekwho has played a total of tournaments this year solo 13 (including the slams, 14 including the Olympics) it was like this deprived of the 120 points won in the 4th round in Miamihis worst result of the season.

Even Sabalenka, on the other hand, even though she didn’t meet this requirement either – the tennis player from Minsk played 16 tournaments, but including the 4 Slams outside the WTA count – she instead lost only 10 points in the 2nd round in Dubai (in the 1st round had received a bye).

The new regulation, already contested when it was introduced at the end of last year by the former Swiatek coach Tomasz Wiktorowski, has therefore the Polish girl was punished morewho lost that small cushion of advantage that she needed to keep Sabalenka behind.

In fact, the new WTA ranking as of October 21st sees the Belarusian first with 9706 pointsahead of only 41 points compared to 9665 from Swiatek. Therefore, the “penalty” of 120 points inflicted on the Pole who loses the spoils won in Miami for not having played at least 16 WTA events is decisive.