The WTA tour is showing far more depth than ever

As the men everyone is used to seeing in the Top 10—like Stan Wawrinka, Andy Murray and Novak Djokovic—continue to struggle, the top players on the WTA tour are holding steady and delivering the goods as they dive into the clay season.

When Simona Halep reached the top of the rankings in October 2017, it looked to be just another swap in the game of musical chairs. She was third woman in three months to hold the top spot. Yet six months later, not much has changed in the women’s ranks.

After briefly losing the top spot to Caroline Wozniacki in the wake of the Dane’s Australian Open title, Halep recaptured it a month later and has managed to expand on her points lead ever since.

The rest of the Top 10 is mostly familiar from the fall, too, with names like Elina Svitolina, Garbine Muguruza, and Caroline Garcia keeping steady. The biggest mover in the group, of course, is Sloane Stephens, whose title at the Miami Open catapulted her to a career-high No. 9 in the world.

After years of hearing the field in women’s tennis was thin compared to the men’s game, it seems the shoe is on the other foot.

The immediate effect of this topsy-turvy world is that, at least for the French Open, most of the intrigue is sure to come from the WTA. The Top 10 includes two past winners (defending champ Jelena Ostapenko and 2016 winner Muguruza), a two-time finalist (Halep), and a 2017 semifinalist (Karolina Pliskova). That's to say nothing of past champions Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova lurking at the edges of the fray.

On the men’s side, Rafael Nadal is running out of challenges, Roger Federer’s not playing by choice, Djokovic is struggling, Murray is still rehabbing and Wawrinka sightings have been scarce. Former world No. 4 Kei Nishikori seems to have found his game after a wrist injury, but retired after just one set in Barcelona.

Of the top players who’ve shown clay-court acumen in the past, only Dominic Thiem seems poised to be a threat to the King of Clay, yet he won just two games against him in Monte Carlo. If there’s a Robin Soderling-like surprise lurking for Nadal come Roland Garros, it’s hard to imagine who it would be.

Of course, the clay-court dynamics on both tours could change in a month’s time when Roland Garros gets underway. For now, the WTA boasts the more must-see potential of the two.

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