Iga Swiatek resumes 100th week as World No.1

Iga Swiatek will on Monday make history as WTA World No.1 for the 100th week in her career.

Iga Swiatek who was present at the Santiago Bernabéu for Real Madrid versus Barcelona which ended 3-2 in favour of the hosts.

The 22-year-old pole crashed out of Stuttgart Open in the semis to eventual champion Elena Rybakina will begin the week as World No.1 for the 100th time

Before her sudden rise to greatness, Ashleigh Barty, the world’s best player for the past three years, was retiring at the age of 25.

Barty asked to be removed immediately from the rankings with a lead over Swiatek of more than 2,200 ranking points. And so, the 20-year-old from Poland was one match-win away from becoming the No.1 player.

Swiatek, at 22 years and 326 days, is the fifth youngest player to reach 100 weeks as World No.1. She has already won four Grand Slam singles titles and will be favored to win a fifth at Roland Garros in June.

Swiatek was ranked No.9 at the start of the 2022 season. And while she had broken through with her first major singles title in the fall of 2020 at Roland Garros, otherwise there was scant evidence of the spectacular success that was to unfold.

The run started in Doha, where she won the title, defeating three Top 10 players at the end — Aryna Sabalenka, Maria Sakkari and Anett Kontaveit. Swiatek was the winner in Indian Wells (over Sakkari in the final) and rose to the No.2 ranking. This, she said, was the first time she first contemplated the possibility of the No.1 ranking. The rare Sunshine Double was accomplished in Miami with wins over Coco Gauff, Petra Kvitova, Jessica Pegula and Naomi Osaka.

After winning both of her Billie Jean King cup matches against Romania, Swiatek kept it going in Stuttgart by taking her fourth straight title. She beat Sabalenka in a straight-sets final. The result was the same in Rome, where Swiatek took her third WTA Tour 1000 of the year and ran her streak to 28 straight matches.

Make that 35. Swiatek’s last four victories at Roland Garros were all over future Top 10 players — Gauff, Daria Kasatkina, Pegula and Zheng Qinwen. It was her second title on the red clay in Paris in three years.

The transition to grass proved to be the deal-breaker. Swiatek managed to beat two qualifiers at Wimbledon before falling to Alize Cornet in straight sets.

Those 37 consecutive match-wins were the longest WTA Tour streak since Hingis posted 37 straight some 25 years earlier.

Swiatek finished the season strong, winning the US Open and collecting her first year-end No.1. It was much the same in 2023. In retrospect, the sequel only suffered in comparison to the year before.

Among the 10 players who have held the No.1 ranking in the past decade, Swiatek (86.2 percent, 119-19) trails only Serena Williams (88.3 percent, 143-19) for winning percentage as No.1 over that span.

While Navratilova acknowledges that total weeks at No.1 is a valid statistic, she prizes a more bottom-line analysis.

“There’s been a bunch of No.1s [29], but they weren’t all No.1 at the end of the year,” she said. “For me, it’s how many times you’ve been No.1 at the end of the year.”

Swiatek, who turns 23 on the last day of May, is in position to achieve a rare three-peat. She has a 2,700-point lead on No.2 Sabalenka and is looking to become only the sixth woman to hold the No.1 year-end ranking for three consecutive seasons, following Evert (1975-77), Navratilova (1982-86), Graf (1987-90, 93-96), Williams (2013-15) and Barty (2019-21).

“One-hundred weeks at No.1 is a huge achievement in any era. Congratulations to Iga. I’m so happy for her and have loved watching her hard work pay off,” Barty said.