Iga Swiatek is still the queen of tennis after a successful 2023 campaign. The Polish phenom is still the undisputed world No. 1 in the women’s singles by the WTA. Her 2022 campaign was more dominant, as she finished last season with more than double the points of world No. 2 Ons Jabeur. Jabeur finished with 4555 points, while Iga bagged a total of 10,335 points. Talk about dominance.
This season, the 22-year-old had a much more competitive campaign thanks to worthy adversaries such as Aryna Sabalenka, Elena Rybakina, Coco Gauff, and many more. But even though the level of competition this year was more cutthroat than the last, it was still the young Polish who came out on top with a 245-point lead over world No. 2 Aryna Sabalenka.
The young Polish reserves her seat at the table of the tennis greats by becoming the sixth-youngest woman to finish back-to-back as year-end No. 1. By achieving such an impressive feat, she now joins an elite company of players like Chris Evert, Steffi Graff, Monica Seles, Martina Hingis, and Caroline Wozniacki.
She was well-aware that her WTA 2023 results were a little lackluster compared to her 2022 season. “I just didn’t feel at the end like I’m in the shadow anymore because I knew that I’m having another great season. And honestly, I kind of accepted that I’m not going to have a season like that, like in 2022, and I just looked forward.” Swiatek shared to the media.
“Coming back to world No. 1, it’s a dream come true for sure. I would say I wasn’t expecting that right now this season. I was kind of hoping that maybe next year is going to be my year.
“But it seems like I’m just working hard and focusing on the right things and work. So I’m really happy.”
Even though this season wasn’t as dominant as the last, Iga still played world-class tennis. The world No. 1 garnered the most match wins this year with 68, 11 more than Jessa Pegula, who was next with 57.
Swiatek also finished the season as the queen of the clay, as she finished with the most clay-court match wins with 19. Meanwhile, Jessica Pegula reigns on the hard court with 43 hard-court match wins, while Swiatek came in close second with 42.
Speaking of dominance, the 22-year-old has the most wins over the top 10 players this season with 13, while the Americans Coco Gauff and Jessica Pegula are tied in second with nine wins apiece. Not only that, the right-handed Polish also has the most wins over the top five players with seven wins, while world No. 4 Elena Rybakina came in second with six, and world No. 5 Jessica Pegula came in third with five.
Sabalenka’s transcendence
There have already been several mentions of how much more competitive the campaign was this year than the last. And a big part of the reason why this year’s championship race was more exciting than the 2022 campaign was Aryna Sabalenka.
The 25-year-old made a huge leap in her game this year compared to her 2022 campaign. Last year, she finished the year as the world No. 7 with just 2,970 points. It was still an impressive feat for any tennis player in the WTA, but this year, she found an extra gear to her game, which can only mean bad news for her adversaries.
Sabalenka finished the season as the world No. 2 with 9,050 points, only 245 points below world No. 1 Iga Swiatek. The top spot was virtually a two-horse race between Swiatek and Sabalenka, as the third star to follow them was Coco Gauff, who was thousands of points behind the top-two singles players in the WTA.
Swiatek and Sabalenka were the WTA 2023 odds favourites for the most parts of the season for a good reason, and true enough, they ended the campaign as the one and two in the WTA singles rankings.
The right-handed Belarusian was the world No. 1 back in September; in fact, she was still the world No. 1 by the start of November. But even though she fell to the second spot by year-end, Sabalenka still put up one of the greatest seasons in the WTA.
This season, Sabalenka advanced to at least the semifinals of all four Grand Slams. She won the Australian Open after defeating Rybakina in the finals, and she also reached the finals of the U.S. Open but fell short against Coco Gauff.
She played just 16 tournaments, three less than Swiatek and Gauff, and played a total of 69 games, 404 aces, 80.8 per service games won, and 72.9 per first serve won. Sabalenka has just kept on improving year after year, and this SBOTOP writer thinks it’s only a matter of time until she becomes the year-end WTA World No. 1.
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