Coco Gauff did not win the Australian Open, of course, but she did lose to the eventual winner, Aryna Sabalenka. Still, Gauff made the semifinals of the first Grand Slam of the year. This continues her stellar run of play that began in August of last year. Because of her good form, Gauff has moved back into the No. 3 ranking on the WTA tour.
Sabalenka remained No. 2, 865 points behind Iga Swiatek. Swiatek was bounced out of the Australian Open unexpectedly early in the third round. The issue for Sabalenka was that she won the Australian Open last year, too, so she didn’t gain all that much ground on Swiatek. The five-week preview shows that No. 1 could come down to how well Swiatek and Sabalenka play in February, though.
Coco Gauff moved up one spot to No. 3 and doubles partner Jessica Pegula also moved up one spot to No. 4. The loser was Elena Rybakina, who also lost unexpectedly early in Melbourne, and fell from 3 to 5. The biggest riser in the top 20 was Qinwen Zheng who moved up from 15 to 7. Zheng lost to Sabalenka in the Australian Open women’s final.
On the men’s side, Novak Djokovic remains atop the ATP rankings. This is his record 410th week ranked No. 1. That is a record that is very unlikely to be broken and is 100 more weeks than second-best Roger Federer and his 310 weeks at No. 1. Djokovic, however, did lose 1,200 points by not winning the Australian Open again.
Carlos Alcaraz added 400 points in the Australian Open so he only trails Djokovic by 600 points. In fact, all the top four ATP players have at least 8,310 points. Jannik Sinner remained at No. 4 but gained 1,820 points and trails No. 3 Daniil Medvedev by just 455 points.
Speaking (or writing, I guess) of Jannik Sinner, he has decided to drop out of the Marseille Open. The event is scheduled to run from February 5 through 11 this year. Sinner made the quarterfinals at the tournament in 2021 but failed to play in 2023 as scheduled and Arthur Fils won in a walkover.
Sinner has a good reason for not playing at Marseille this year, however. That is because he probably needs time to refocus and rest after winning the Australian Open. He deserves some rest.