On May 22, Beijing time, the WTA officially announced the latest world rankings. The WTA Tour has travelled to Rome, Italy, for the last clay-court 1,000 tournament before the French Open. After two weeks of fierce competition, Lebakina successfully won the championship and entered the top 5 for the first time, and Chinese Xiaohua Zheng Qinwen entered the world's top 20 for the first time with her performance in the quarterfinals of Rome.
With 1,000 points in Rome, Lebakina rose from world No. 6 to No. 4 in the world, the first time she had reached the top 5 in her career. Due to the improvement of Lebakina's ranking, Garcia and Gauff each dropped one place to rank 5th and 6th in the world, respectively.
Swiatek failed to achieve a third consecutive title at Roma, and her lead over Sabalenka shrank to 1,399 points this week. Next Roland Garros Swiatek has 2,000 points to defend, with Sabalenka having the earliest chance to climb to world number one after Roland Garros.
With a runner-up finish in Rome, Kalinina soared 22 spots this week to 25th in the world, setting a new personal high. Also improving the top 100 were Mukhova (+10), Paulini (+13), Wanzosova (+13), Wang Xiyu (+13), Grabhull (+15), Parry (+32), Osorio (+16), Vorenets (+12) and Dolehead (+13).
The biggest drop in the TOP100 was American Liu Jingwen, who plummeted 44 places in the rankings from 56 to 100th in the world after deducting 180 points for last year's Rabat runner-up. The top 100 players with a drop of 10 were Andreescu (-10), Sharif (-12), Putinseva (-10), Teichmann (-17), Wang Xinyu (-18), Zanevska (-11), Anisimova (-28) and Dias (-13).
In terms of Chinese players, Zheng Qinwen rose from 21st to 19th in the top eight with her performance in Rome, which is the first time in her career to enter the TOP20, becoming the fifth Chinese golden flower to enter the TOP20 after Li Na, Wang Qiang and Zheng Jie. Wang Xinyu slipped 18 places in the ranking after deducting 150 points from last year's Laviswar-Denpolda Challenge. Wang Xiyu rose from 75th to 62nd place with Roma's performance in the round of 16.