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The WTA calendar had two events last week—the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix and the Open de Rouen. While Jelena Ostapenko won the title in the former event, Elina Svitolina emerged victorious in the latter.
Ostapenko put forth an impressive performance at Stuttgart and won against both the top seeds, Iga Swiatek and Aryna Sabalenka, to clinch her ninth career title. Her 6-3, 3-6, 6-2 win over Swiatek in the quarterfinals gave the Latvian a 6-0 lead in the head-to-head against the Pole.
In the final, it was Ostapenko who was 0-3 behind in the head-to-head against Aryna Sabalenka but secured a brilliant 6-4, 6-1 win to get a clay-court title since Roland Garros 2017.
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Ostapenko earned 499 points after her win and moved up six places in the WTA rankings to No. 18 with 2345 points. Meanwhile, despite her loss in the final, Sabalenka earned 227 points and maintained her dominance on the No. 1 ranking with 10,768 points.
Meanwhile, Elina Svitolina won her 18th career singles title at the Open de Rouen, with a near-perfect week. The Ukrainian did not drop a set at the event and finished the tournament with a 6-4, 7-6 (8) win over Olga Danilovic in the final.
The win gave Svitolina 250 points, and moved her one position up on the WTA Rankings, to No. 17 with 2430 points. Danilovic also earned 162 points with her run to the final and moved five places up the rankings to No. 34 with 1534 points.
The Madrid Open might have a serious impact on the WTA Rankings
Last week, there was no significant movement in the Top 10 on the WTA Rankings. However, with the WTA 1000 event in Madrid around the corner, there is a chance of significant movement in the rankings.
Both the top-two ranked players—Aryna Sabalenka and Iga Swiatek—have a lot of points to defend, as they played the final in the Spanish capital last year, with the Pole being the defending champion.
As it stands, Sabalenka already has a lead of more than 3000 points over Swiatek in the WTA rankings. Even if both of them are knocked out early in Madrid, the lead for the Belarusian will be near the 4000-point mark. To maintain her standing at No. 2, Swiatek needs a successful title defense, as the likes of Jessica Pegula and Coco Gauff can topple her if they have a deep run in Madrid and the Pole has an early exit.
Sabalenka will begin her campaign with a second-round clash against Russian qualifier Anna Blinkova, whereas Swiatek will begin her title defense against Alexandra Eala in the second round. The current top 20 WTA rankings are as follows:
