Tennis season is hilarious, if you think about it. We’re one-fourth of the way through the year, with one Slam in the books. And now that we’ve got a pretty solid read for who’s playing better than whom, we are completely changing the surface of play — from hard to clay — for the next couple of months!
Mind you, this is a great thing. The athletes are professionals! Make things difficult! Keep things fresh! But it renders players’ end-of-March form only semi-relevant.
Let’s take stock of said form all the same. With the clay-court season upon us, let’s look at which tennis players have been putting together the best results in recent weeks and months. When I couldn’t decide between two players, I used clay prowess as a future-proofing tiebreaker.
On both the men’s and women’s tours right now, there’s a major “top three and everyone else” vibe, albeit with a dangerous and intriguing No. 4. Here are the top 10 from both tours.
Women
1. Iga Swiatek
WTA ranking: 1
Tennis Abstract ranking: 1
2023 record (vs. top 50): 16-4 (9-4)
Despite straight-set losses to Barbora Krejcikova in Dubai and to Elena Rybakina in both Australia and Indian Wells — and despite a rib injury that kept her out of the Miami field — the world No. 1 gets the No. 1 spot here too. She has won 41 of her past 45 matches on clay and she has three titles to defend in the coming weeks (Stuttgart, Rome and Roland Garros). She’ll be favored in any tournament she enters between now and Wimbledon.
Swiatek, 21, has had an odd 2023. The defending French Open and US Open champ has played in 20 matches, and none of them have gone to three sets. Nineteen of the 32 sets she won have been via a 6-2 score or worse … as have five of the eight sets she lost. Either everything clicks or nothing clicks. She is probably still the best player in the world, but her bad moments of late have been much worse than those of the other players near the top. What does that mean for clay season? We’ll find out.
2. Aryna Sabalenka
WTA ranking: 2
Tennis Abstract ranking: 3
2023 record (vs. top 50): 20-3 (14-2)
Her serve still disappears at times, as it did through much of 2022. But aside from a hamstring issue that forced her to pull out of this weeks’ Charleston Open, that’s just about the only thing slowing her down. Since the US Open, she is 3-4 when her double-fault rate pops above 10% and a whopping 27-4 when it doesn’t.
The 24-year-old has reached at least the quarterfinals of five of her past seven…
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