Rankings Winners & Losers: Coco Gauff makes Top 100 debut

There was a lot of movement in both the ATP and WTA rankings this week, but no move was more notable than Coco Gauff making her Top 100 debut after a breakthrough week in Linz.

Having originally lost in qualifying, the 15-year-old Gauff got into the main draw of the Upper Austria Ladies Linz as a lucky loser after a last-minute withdrawal, and she capitalized on that opportunity in a big way—going all the way to win the first WTA title of her career at the International-level event.

Gauff was already projected to make her Top 100 debut by reaching the quarterfinals, but by winning the tournament, she surged from No. 110 to No. 71 in the new WTA rankings.

“I’m still overwhelmed and shocked,” Gauff said in her post-match press conference. “It’s just literally insane that I got in as a lucky loser and now I’m the champion. My dad actually told me when I got in, before the first main draw match, he said, ‘You can’t lose twice in the same tournament.’ I’m sure he never thought it would come this far, to me being the champion, but I guess he was right!”

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Gauff is the youngest woman to make her Top 100 debut since Sesil Karatantcheva did it as a younger 15-year-old on the January 31, 2005 rankings, and she’s the youngest American woman to make her Top 100 debut since April 9, 1990, when Jennifer Capriati did it just 11 days after her 14th birthday.

Her ranking rise may not end there, either—Gauff is playing another International-level tournament in Luxembourg this week, and if she wins that title, she could potentially break into the Top 50.

Halfway across the world, the two finalists at the Tianjin Open—Sweden’s Rebecca Peterson and Great Britain’s Heather Watson—also made big jumps up the WTA rankings. Peterson rose from No. 59 to No. 44, her Top 50 debut, after winning her second WTA title in five weeks, while Watson rose from No. 125 to No. 88 after reaching the final. It's the former No. 38’s highest ranking in over a year.

Berrettini, who nearly halved his ranking from No. 25 to No. 13 after reaching his first Grand Slam semifinal at the US Open last month, rose from No. 13 to No. 11 this week— a new career-high—after reaching his first Masters 1000 semifinal at the Rolex Shanghai Masters.

And the 23-year-old Italian has a great shot at breaking the Top 10 before the end of the year: he has no points to defend the rest of the season, and is still in the running for a spot at the Nitto ATP Finals.

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Two other rising stars hit new career-highs on the ATP rankings, as well, with Felix Auger-Aliassime rising from No. 19 to No. 17, and Alexander Bublik rising from No. 54 to No. 48, his Top 50 debut.

There were a few notable drops on the ATP rankings: Borna Coric dropped out of the Top 20 from No. 15 to No. 22 after falling first round in Shanghai; he reached the final of the Masters 1000 event a year ago. And Kyle Edmund fell out of the Top 50 from No. 42 to No. 55 after being ousted in the first round of Shanghai. Edmund, a semifinalist at the 2018 Australian Open, is a former No. 14.