Jessica Pegula's stay in the top five of the WTA rankings will end at the beginning of next week, thanks to Jasmine Paolini's historic run at the 2024 Wimbledon Championships.
Pegula has been a mainstay in that elite band for 90 consecutive weeks. She first entered the top five after reaching the 2022 US Open quarterfinal and rose to a career-high ranking of World No. 3 after winning the Guadalajara Open a few weeks later.
It was the highest ranking by an American player that season and the harvesting period for Pegula, who, after 13 years of toiling on the lower tiers and fending off career-threatening injuries, was finally enjoying the fruits of her labor.
2022 was also the year Pegula made the quarterfinals in three of the four Grand Slams, losing each time to the eventual champion. But after an injury-hit 2024 season, the 30-year-old will vacate her top-five spot to Italy's Jasmine Paolini.
Despite a triumphant return on the grass courts of Berlin, where she bagged her first title of the year, Pegula suffered a shock second-round defeat to Wang Xinyu at Wimbledon (singles). She is dropping 360 points for failing to replicate last year's quarterfinal run at the grass-court major.
Pegula will drop to sixth (best-case scenario) or seventh if Jelena Ostapenko wins Wimbledon. With plenty of points to defend during the North American hard-court swing, starting with the Canadian Open next month (which she won last summer), she is in danger of cascading out of the Top 10.
Her spot in the top five will be taken by Jasmine Paolini after the Roland Garros runner-up became the first Italian woman to make the Wimbledon semifinal.
Although Pegula's stay in the top five will end after 90 consecutive weeks, she will be determined to secure her Top 10 spot (currently over 100 straight weeks), showing that she's been a consistent force on the women's circuit since she transitioned into a late bloomer.
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