Women's Tennis: 5 players who spent the most consecutive weeks as WTA World Number 1
The WTA rankings - a computerized rolling 52-week ranking of women professional tennis players was introduced for the first time on November 3rd, 1975. Since 1975 to 2018, 25 different women belonging to 14 different nations have been ranked World Number 1. Of the 25, 13 different women have gone on to finish the year as World Number 1. Only 3 women namely - Karolina Pliskova, Dinara Safina and Jelena Jankovic have been ranked World Number 1 but failed to win a Grand Slam title. Steffi Graf of Germany has finished as the Year End World Number 1 on 8 different occasions - an all-time record.
In the women's game, maximum points are up for grabs in the Grand Slams followed by the WTA Finals and the 4 Premier Mandatory WTA events at Indian Wells, Key Biscayne, Madrid and Beijing. Then comes the WTA Premier 5 tournaments in Doha, Rome, Cincinnati, Toronto/ Montreal and Wuhan. The two are analogous to the ATP Masters 1000 and ATP World Tour 500 events.
We take a look at 5 players who were at the top for the most weeks in succession:
#5 Monica Seles
No tennis athlete won more fame and laurels in teenage than Yugoslavian Monica Seles. If not for the unfortunate knife attack on her, Seles would have probably won a lot more Grand Slam titles than the 9 Majors that she won.
Following her maiden Grand Slam win at the Australian open of 1991, Seles became the World Number 1 for the first time at the tender age of just 17. She had a total of 5 stints at the top of the rankings. Between September 9th, 1991 to June 6th, 1993, Seles won 7 of her 9 Grand Slam titles and the Number 1 ranked player for a period of 91 consecutive weeks.