Despite not having played a tennis match since February, Ashleigh Barty is ending the season as the No.1 player in the world, thanks to the WTA’s revised ranking system introduced because of the coronavirus pandemic. People’s opinions are polarized regarding this situation.
How rankings work
Traditionally, the WTA rankings take into account a player’s best 16 tournaments for singles and 11 for doubles in a 52-week period. When the pandemic started, the WTA decided to freeze the rankings and then came up with a revised system which also counts in a player’s best 16 results in singles and best 11 results in doubles, but based on the points earned from March 2019 through December 2020.
