Ranking Reaction: Iga Swiatek kicks off 60th straight week at No. 1, Alcaraz returns to top spot

There are some major shifts on both the ATP and WTA rankings this week after Rome, including some at the very top, but the top player in women’s tennis holds strong at No. 1 and even hits a big milestone.

Iga Swiatek first rose to No. 1 on April 4th, 2022 and hasn’t let go, and this week she spends her 60th consecutive week there.

She’s just the third woman in WTA rankings history to spend 60 or more consecutive weeks at No. 1 in their very first stint at the top spot.

WOMEN TO SPEND 60+ WEEKS AT NO. 1 IN FIRST STINT AT NO. 1:

• Steffi Graf [186 weeks from August 17, 1987 to March 10, 1991]
• Martina Hingis [80 weeks from March 31, 1997 to October 11, 1998]
• Iga Swiatek [60 weeks from April 4, 2022 to present]

Just a few spots down from Swiatek, Elena Rybakina makes her Top 5 debut, rising from No. 6 to No. 4 after winning Rome—it was her second title of the year and both have come at the WTA 1000 level, as the reigning Wimbledon champion also won Indian Wells in March.

Rybakina was already the first player representing Kazakhstan ever to break into the Top 10, and now she one-ups her own record to Top 5.

And after a quarterfinal showing in the Italian capital, Zheng Qinwen moves up from No. 21 to No. 19 this week, becoming just the fifth Chinese player ever to break into the Top 20 on the WTA rankings. The first four in order of career-high ranking were Li Na (No. 2), Wang Qiang (No. 12), Peng Shuai (No. 14) and Zheng Jie (No. 15).

Finally, Ukraine’s Anhelina Kalinina soars from No. 47 to No. 25—surpassing her previous career-high of No. 28—after reaching her first WTA 1000 final in Rome. She took out back-to-back Top 20 players en route, beating Beatriz Haddad Maia and Veronika Kudermetova, before having to retire against Rybakina due to a thigh injury.

Over on the ATP rankings, there’s a complete reshuffle in the Top 3: Carlos Alcaraz rises from No. 2 back to No. 1, kicking off his 23rd career week at the top spot; Daniil Medvedev, a former No. 1 himself, rises from No. 3 to No. 2 after capturing his first Masters 1000 clay-court title in Rome; and Novak Djokovic dips from No. 1 to No. 3, though he still remains within a few hundred points of No. 2 Medvedev.

Holger Rune, who took out Djokovic and No. 4-ranked Casper Ruud in the Italian capital before falling to Medvedev in the final, moves up from No. 7 to another new career-high of No. 6 as a result—the Dane, who reached No. 10 for the first time at the end of last year, got to No. 9 in January, No. 8 in March, No. 7 in April and now No. 6 in May.

Though he’s defending quarterfinal points at Roland Garros, Rune has a huge opportunity to add points in the following months—after that run in Paris last year, he went 4-11 until late September, when he began his breakthrough 19-2 run at the very end of the season.

And last but certainly not least, Argentina’s Tomas Martin Etcheverry makes his Top 50 debut, jumping from No. 61 to No. 46 after a two-week period that saw him reach the second round in Rome (falling to Djokovic) and then the final at the Challenger-175 event in Bordeaux.