Former world No 1 Garbine Muguruza is set to leave the top-100 this month. Muguruza, who reached the world No 1 spot for the first time in 2017, is currently ranked at No 83 in the world. After starting the season with a 0-4 record, Muguruza pulled out late from this week’s WTA event in Abu Dhabi due to personal reasons.
Shortly after withdrawing from Abu Dhabi, Muguruza also withdrew from a WTA 500 event in Doha and a WTA 1000 event Dubai – where she was scheduled to play in the qualifying events. Last year, Muguruza made the Doha quarterfinal and Dubai round-of-16, respectively.
Because she won’t defend those points, Muguruza will soon be exiting the top-100.
Muguruza on her slump
In late 2021, Muguruza won the WTA Finals and looked very strong going into 2022. But since winning the 2021 WTA Finals, Muguruza has been struggling a lot with her form and results.
Now I’m focusing on training hard and being humble. You have to know that maybe you haven’t had the success recently as you had in other years, but that’s fine because things can change very quickly. With tennis, one week it can go wrong, then next week it can go well, then everything changes again.
I think experience helps me to stay calm in the not-so-good moments when I haven’t been playing as well or results haven’t followed. I feel that this year it’s more about keeping it calm and more simple. Last year I put myself under a lot of pressure, telling myself to keep going to stay at the top all the time.
That definitely didn’t help me, and it was a bit of a struggle. This year, yes ranking is important – I’ve been at every possible ranking – but that is not my priority anymore. Now it’s about enjoying my time on court and taking the trophies back home, then we’ll see what the ranking is,” Muguruza said.
