For the fourth time this year, Jannik Sinner and Aryna Sabalenka have scooped prestigious hard-court titles on the same weekend.
And this time, their victories have significant rankings implications.
Sinner and Sabalenka, the reigning Australian Open champions, won the 1000-level titles in Shanghai and Wuhan respectively, within mere hours of one another on Sunday.
“[These are] two players whose fates in 2024 are, seemingly, mystically and weirdly tethered,” noted co-host Catherine Whitaker on this week’s episode of The Tennis Podcast.
By reaching the Shanghai final, Sinner guaranteed he would finish a career-best season at world No.1, becoming just the sixth player in the past 20 years – after Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic, Andy Murray and Carlos Alcaraz – to achieve the feat.
Notably, Sinner has clinched the year-end No.1 ranking earlier than any player since 2015, a season when Djokovic guaranteed on 14 September he would finish on top.
In the past 15 years, there have only been two seasons during which players have locked up the year-end No.1 ranking earlier than Sinner.
FASTEST TO CLINCH ATP YEAR-END NO.1 (Since 2009)
[Info supplied by Stats Perform; dates for each year reflect the Monday when the new rankings were released]
He added weight to the achievement by beating Djokovic in the Shanghai final, his third straight victory against a player who has ended three of the past four seasons at world No.1.
“’It’s a good feeling. I'm very happy to achieve this. It was an amazing season for me, and it's not finished yet,” Sinner said.
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“Being No.1 in the world at the end of the year, it was only a dream just to become No.1. Now finishing it, it's also a different feeling.
“For me it also depends how you start a season. If you start it in a good way like I did, winning Australia, then you have much more confidence throughout the whole season.
“The season is going amazingly.”
Indeed, Shanghai marked Sinner’s seventh title in an extraordinary year that also included his first two Grand Slam singles trophies at the Australian Open and US Open.
Sabalenka also triumphed at Melbourne Park and Flushing Meadows, and like Sinner also won in Cincinnati, before her triumph in Wuhan – her third straight title at the Chinese event.
Sabalenka is now a perfect 17-0 lifetime in Wuhan after seeing off local superstar Zheng Qinwen in a rematch of their AO 2024 final.
With the victory, Sabalenka vaulted into first place in the WTA Race to the Finals, and closed to within just 69 ranking points of current world No.1 Iga Swiatek.
With Swiatek still to defend 1500 points from her triumph at the 2023 WTA Finals, and Sabalenka riding the brilliant form of having won 20 of her past 21 matches, the world No.2 appears poised to strike.
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“That’s really tight ranking right now,” said Sabalenka, who briefly snatched the No.1 ranking off Swiatek following last year’s US Open.
“Really nice to see. I always say of course it’s one of the goals, but I prefer to focus on myself and just keep working hard.
“We’ll see after the [WTA] Finals if I was good enough this season to become world No.1.”