Garbine Muguruza Rises to Top-3 Rankings for the First Time in Three Years

The 2021 WTA season ended after the conclusion of the season-ending WTA Finals. In the final, Garbine Muguruza defeated the No.8 seed Anett Kontaveit to clinch her maiden WTA Finals Championship.

With the victory, Muguruza became the first Spaniard to win the WTA Finals in the tournament’s history. It marked her third title of the season, with the previous two trophies coming at the Dubai Championships and the Chicago Fall Tennis Classic.

WTA year-end Top-10: Ashleigh Barty, Garbine Muguruza, Iga Swiatek and Others

With the WTA season over, tennis journalist Jose Morgado posted an interesting tweet, comparing the year-end rankings of the Top-10 players with their 2020 season’s year-end ranking.

Looking at the 2021 year-end rankings, only two players – Ashleigh Barty and Karolina Pliskova, feature inside the Top-10 from last year’s Top-10 WTA rankings. Barty, the Australian tennis star, has now finished three consecutive seasons as the year-end No.1.

Muguruza, who was ranked No.15 at the end of 2020, has finished the 2021 season as the World No.3, a leap of twelve spots in the rankings.

However, Barbora Krejcikova has shown the biggest improvement. The 2021 French Open champion will end the season as the World No.4 when the updated rankings come on Monday. Ranked No.74 at the end of 2020, Krejcikova will have jumped a whopping 70 places in the rankings.

Equally promising has been the 24-year-old Paula Badosa, who won the biggest title of her career at the 2021 Indian Wells. Badosa has finished the 2021 season as the World No.8, a tremendous jump from being ranked No.69 at the end of last year.

Probably, the biggest omission from the 2021 Top-10 year-end rankings is the 4-time Grand Slam champion, Naomi Osaka. Ranked No.3 at the end of 2020, the Japanese star made a stunning start to this season by lifting the Australian Open title.

However, mid-way through the season, Osaka opened up about her mental health struggles and subsequently skipped many important tournaments. After her third-round exit at the US Open, Osaka took an indefinite break from tennis and plummets to World No.13 in the year-end rankings.

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