Australian Open champion Naomi Osaka is the first player from Asia to top the men’s or women’s tennis rankings and the youngest woman to make her debut at No. 1 in nine years.<\/p>\n
“I feel like I’m literally just still learning,” the 21-year-old Osaka said. “Everyone kind of adjusts to being No. 1 in a different way.” Simona Halep’s 48-week stay atop the WTA rankings ended Monday as she slid to No. 3 after a fourth-round loss to Serena Williams, one year after getting to the final at Melbourne Park.<\/p>\n
“The main goal is just to play as good as I can every match, to win every match I play, so the ranking doesn’t really matter,” Halep said.Halep said the year-end ranking is what is “more important” than where things stand now, “so I will not stress myself about this.” Osaka’s second consecutive major title, following her success at the U.S. Open last year, helped her rise three spots.<\/p>\n
Osaka is the youngest woman to reach the top since 2010, when Caroline Wozniacki did it at 20.”People were talking about being No. 1 if I win this tournament. I was able to accomplish that,” Osaka said. “But the ranking was never my real goal. It was just to win this tournament.”<\/p>\n
The runner-up at Melbourne Park, Petra Kvitova, jumped from No. 6 to No. 2.Sloane Stephens is No. 4, and Karolina Pliskova went from No. 8 to No. 5.Williams missed the 2018 tournament after having a baby; her quarterfinal run this time pushed her up five places to No. 11.<\/p>\n
Surprise semifinalist Danielle Collins, a 25-year-old from Florida, climbed from No. 35 to No. 23. The woman she upset in the fourth round, three-time major champion Angelique Kerber, dropped from No. 2 to No. 6.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Australian Open champion Naomi Osaka is the first player from Asia to top the men’s or women’s tennis rankings and the youngest woman to make her debut at No. 1 in nine years. “I feel like I’m literally just still learning,” the 21-year-old Osaka said. “Everyone kind of adjusts to being No. 1 in a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":53671,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53670"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53670\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53672,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53670\/revisions\/53672"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}