Iga Swiatek kicked off the new year just as she finished the previous one - by staying at the summit of women's tennis.
Swiatek's second stint as World No. 1 has begun in a positive fashion. After sweeping back-to-back titles in Beijing and Cancun at the tail end of last season, the Polish star managed to topple Sabalenka in the year-end No.1 ranking.
For the second straight year, Swiatek was on top of the world. She finished a very challenging year, in her own words, with 9,295 points, at least 245 more than Sabalenka. But looking at this week's WTA rankings, which are still in infancy, Swiatek owned 9,505.
Considering that the season just started, many tennis fans thought it might have been a computer error. But that is not the case because the WTA has implemented a new ranking rule.
Previously, a WTA player's ranking was determined by calculating points accumulated from those tournaments that yielded the highest ranking points during a 52-week rolling period. This was then broken down to a maximum of 16 tournaments, and the WTA Finals should a player qualify.
Of the 16 tournaments, four are from the Grand Slams, four at the Mandatory WTA 1000s, the best two results from two non-Mandatory WTA 1000s, and the best six results from tournaments like the WTA Elite Trophy and the rest of the tournament categories from 1000 to 250 level.
However, that number has been raised to 18 tournaments by the WTA, which has now updated the new rankings to factor Swiatek's points from tournaments in Bad Homburg (semifinalist) and Tokyo (quarterfinalist), which accounted for 210 points.
The gap between herself and Sabalenka extended to 455 points because Swiatek's total points increased to 9,505 while Sabalenka did not gain any additional points. The reason is that the Belarusian played in 15 tournaments last year.
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