Aryna Sabalenka’s world number one status is potentially on the line at the French Open – but the four-time Grand Slam singles champion says she is ignoring the pressure that comes with the top ranking.<\/p>\n
The 28-year-old has been world number one for the past 84 weeks, having replaced Iga Swiatek in October 2024.<\/p>\n
The Belarusian holds a 1,255-point lead over second-placed Elena Rybakina, who beat her in January’s Australian Open final.<\/p>\n
Rybakina must reach the semi-finals to have a chance of becoming the 30th woman in WTA history to achieve the coveted number one spot.<\/p>\n
Sabalenka, who lost to Coco Gauff in last year’s Roland Garros final, began her Paris campaign with a 6-4 6-2 win over Spain’s Jessica Bouzas Maneiro.<\/p>\n
“I think we all feel pressure – that is just part of our lives, so I have learned to ignore it,” Sabalenka told the crowd on Court Philippe Chatrier.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Aryna Sabalenka’s world number one status is potentially on the line at the French Open – but the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":605112,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-605111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=605111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605111\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/605112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=605111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=605111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=605111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}