Elina Svitolina will make one of the biggest moves in the rankings in the WTA's history after her triumph at the 2023 Strasbourg Open.
When players move up many places in the WTA Rankings after a good tournament, it always makes headlines. However, due to the nature of the tiers of WTA events, it's not often possible to move by more than a few dozen of places.
The lowest-level WTA tournaments are WTA 250 events, which award 280 points to the champion. For these events, the cut-off on the entry list is around 100th place in the rankings, so even if a player makes a winning run, the move won't be bigger than maybe 30 places.
But there are also special situations and that was certainly the case of Elina Svitolina at the 2023 Strasbourg Open. The Ukrainian entered the tournament as World No. 508 thanks to her protected ranking.
Svitolina has been away from the sport because of pregnancy and her return was probably even better than she expected. She returned at the 2023 Strasbourg Open and managed to win the tournament after a sensational run.
Svitolina's journey to the title was not without its share of luck. After defeating Louisa Chirico, she was expected to face second-seeded Elise Mertens, but Mertens withdrew from the tournament. Svitolina then beat Varvara Gracheva and Clara Burel to reach the final against Anna Blinkova, winning the final match 6-2, 6-3.
In a remarkable act of generosity following her win, Svitolina announced that she would donate all of her prize money from the tournament to relief efforts in Ukraine, focusing on children in particular.
There's been a lot that happened for her during the week, but that continues also on Monday as Svitolina moved up by 316 places all the way to position no. 192 in the WTA Rankings. Although it's still very far from her career-high third place, her comeback is certainly trending in the right direction.
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