Swiatek Holds Strong in Top Spot as Two Players Break into Top 10


Iga Swiatek is still in charge of the 2024 WTA Race, which will determine the year-end World No. 1 and the eight players who will qualify for the WTA Finals. The Pole has still not added to the 7335 points she has accumulated so far at this year’s grass-court swing. She is taking a well-deserved rest following her Roland Garros success two weeks ago. But her spot at the top is not in any danger as she had an advantage of 2869 points over the second-placed player.

The 23-year-old is the only woman who has qualified for the 2024 WTA Finals so far, which will be held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, for the first time. Some of the players who will look to rubberstamp their passports to the Gulf Kingdom for the year-end championships include Aryna Sabalenka, Elena Rybakina, and Coco Gauff. Sabalenka has tallied 4466 points, the second-most by a WTA player this season, thanks to her successful title defense at the Austrian Open in January and back-to-back runner-up finishes in Madrid and Rome.

Rybakina, winner of three WTA 500s in 2024, is in third ahead of Coco Gauff, who fell in the semifinal of the Berlin Open this past week. There are new entrants into the Top 10 of the race. Anna Kalinskaya was unlucky not to win the Berlin Open after wasting five match points in the final. She climbs four spots to ninth, while Victoria Azarenka, a semifinalist in the German capital, is in 10th.

Jessica Pegula’s season is off and running as she motored 15 spots to 15th place in the race. The six-time Grand Slam quarterfinalist captured her first title of the season in Berlin. She is the biggest mover in the Top 20. Yulia Putintseva is another player enjoying a fantastic season, and the race proves it. She won the other WTA tournament this past week, her first since 2021. The crafty Kazakhstani was simply unplayable in Birmingham, romping to her first-ever grass-court title by losing just one set all week. She is up to a high of 24th. If she can translate that form at Wimbledon and potentially on the hard courts of North America, it wouldn’t be surprising if she makes a late push to qualify for the WTA Finals.

2024 WTA Race to Riyadh, as of June 24, 2024:

Rank Player Points
1 Iga Swiatek 7335
2 Aryna Sabalenka 4466
3 Elena Rybakina 4121
4 Coco Gauff 3358
5 Jasmine Paolini 3010
6 Danielle Collins 2927
7 Qinwen Zheng 2260
8 Jelena Ostapenko 1960
9 Anna Kalinskaya 1906
10 Victoria Azarenka 1768
11 Marta Kostyuk 1767
12 Emma Navarro 1737
13 Daria Kasatkina 1673
14 Maria Sakkari 1602
15 Jessica Pegula 1445
16 Mirra Andreeva 1427
17 Madison Keys 1421
18 Marketa Vondrousova 1353
19 Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova 1323
20 Dayana Yastremska 1312

And the list continues…