Hot Swiatek cements her No.1 ranking
Iga Swiatek, who won her fifth tournament in a row in Rome on Sunday, will go into the French Open as top seed after consolidating her place as world No.1 on Monday.
The 20-year-old Pole, who won the title at Roland Garros in 2020, is over 2,000 points ahead of defending French Open champion Barbora Krejcikova in the new WTA rankings.
Swiatek has won 20 matches in a row and dropped just one set in her last 20 matches.
Tunisia’s Madrid Open champion Ons Jabeur, who lost to Swiatek in the Italian Open final, climbed to a careerhigh sixth.
Coco Gauff dropped three places to 18th while former No.1 Simona Halep returned to the top 20 at 19.
On the men’s side, Novak Djokovic extended his record at the top of the ATP rankings to 370 weeks while Rafael Nadal drops down a place to No.5.
The Spaniard was knocked out of the Italian Open in the last 16 and is leapfrogged by the Greek Stefanos Tsitsipas
who made it all the way to the final where he was turned over in straight sets by an inspired Djokovic.
The Serb, who claimed his sixth Italian Open title, has now spent 60 weeks more at No.1 than the next man on the list, Roger Federer (310). Nadal is sixth on the all-time list with 209.
With the French Open starting on Sunday, Djokovic is guaranteed top seeding at Roland Garros and will retain the top spot for at least another two weeks.
Norwegian Casper Ruud climbs two places from tenth to eighth after
reaching the semi-finals in Rome while Italian Matteo Berrettini, who had an operation on his right hand at the end of March and will miss the French Open, goes the other way.
Meanwhile, French hopes of a first men’s singles title at Roland Garros since 1983 suffered a blow on Monday with Gael Monfils announcing he was pulling out of the draw to have surgery on his right heel.
His announcement comes a day after he and his wife, Ukrainian player Elina Svitolina, revealed that they are expecting their first child in October.