Ranking Reaction: Novak Djokovic guaranteed to keep No. 1 after Madrid, Iga Swiatek can build lead

Novak Djokovic may have withdrawn from Madrid, but there’s one piece of good news for him—he’ll keep the No. 1 ranking no matter how well Carlos Alcaraz does at the Masters 1000 tournament.

His lead might shrink to as little as five ranking points, though.

Djokovic currently has 7,135 points on his ranking and will drop 360 for reaching the semifinals in Madrid last year, leaving him with 6,775 points on the May 8th ATP rankings. Alcaraz currently has 6,770 points on his ranking but is defending 1,000 for winning Madrid last year—so even if he successfully defends his title, he’ll still have 6,770 points.

And so, Djokovic—who’s spending his 384th and 385th career weeks at No. 1 during the two weeks of Madrid—is guaranteed to keep building on that all-time record stay at the top spot during Rome.

Depending on how Madrid plays out, anything could happen after Rome. At the Internazionali BNL d'Italia, Djokovic will be defending 1,000 points for winning the title there last year and Alcaraz will only be adding points as he withdrew from the 2022 edition with a right ankle injury. A few other players could also be in the mix for the post-Rome No. 1 ranking, including Daniil Medvedev, who missed both Madrid and Rome in 2022 after undergoing hernia surgery.

Switching gears to the WTA rankings, Iga Swiatek will also keep No. 1 after Madrid, and could even build on her lead—she currently has 8,975 points on her ranking, and after missing the event last year due to a shoulder injury, she could add up to 1,000 points with a title.

Her main challenger for the top spot is almost in the same spot, though. World No. 2 Aryna Sabalenka, who currently has 6,891 points on her ranking, lost her opening match at the WTA 1000 event last year, so she’s only defending 10 points—and could also add up to 1,000 points.

So while Alcaraz and Sabalenka can make up major ground in Madrid in the race for No. 1, the top spot is safe in Djokovic and Swiatek’s hands.

For now, at least.

Dialing it back to the present, there are some notable movers on both the ATP and WTA rankings today: American Tommy Paul inches up to a new career-high of No. 17; Dusan Lajovic, a former Top 25 player, soars from No. 70 to No. 40 after winning the title in Banja Luka, where he took out Djokovic and No. 6 Andrey Rublev en route; Dominic Thiem returns to the Top 100 after reaching the quarters in Munich, rising from No. 101 to No. 93; and American Peyton Stearns continues her rapid rise up the WTA rankings, jumping from No. 89 to No. 72 after reaching the final of a $100,000 ITF Women’s Circuit event in Charleston last week.

Stearns, a former college tennis star at the University of Texas at Austin, had just made her Top 100 debut two weeks ago after reaching the first WTA final of her career on the clay of Bogota, Colombia.