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Ash Barty’s No.1 ranking at the top of the WTA pecking order comes into question after another disappointing race at his home Grand Slam.
Despite falling in the quarter-finals after almost a year away from tennis, Barty is still miles to the top of the standings, with Australian Open champion Naomi Osaka languishing second at over 1,000 points.
Since the 2018 US Open final, Osaka has won four of the nine Grand Slam tournaments held. No other player has won more than one.
Barty has only reached the semi-finals of a grand slam twice in her career and currently does not hold a grand slam title to her name after young Polish Iga Swiatek won Roland Garros in 2020.
Growing concerns around the game that the WTA rankings may need to be reassessed after the governing body introduced dramatic changes to its system in the wake of the COVID-19 derailed tour.
These changes have greatly benefited Barty, who has been pushed to world No.1 under the new system which relied heavily on her scorching second half of the 2019 season.
Rather than its usual 52-week rolling window, the WTA has revealed that it will instead rely on a player’s best 16 tournament results since March 2019 to determine where he is – called the ‘ranking system. frozen”.
Rankings are now labeled “deeply out of sync” with the reality that Barty’s No.1 status does not reflect his place in the pecking order.
“I understand the reasons and the pandemic adjusted WTA ranking has worked quite well so far in my opinion, but they now seem deeply out of sync with reality with Barty still No.1 by a healthy margin holding no Slam titles. (or final) and not playing so little, “tweeted Christopher Clarey, New York Times tennis reporter.
If Barty is to defend her No.1 ranking, she will need to travel overseas this year and play as much as possible, which she has indicated she will do in the coming months.
“We planned and came in to play some of the events of the upcoming Middle East tour,” she said of her plan now.
“Right off the bat it’s obviously the first time we’ve been looking to travel for quite some time now. We’re going to sit down and sort of go through all the health risks that are at this point and where we’re going, so we just work from there. “
Barty’s lead to the top with 9186 points appears to be besieged by Osaka (7835 points), while Simona Halep is also in the running with 7255 points.
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