Belinda Bencic and Elina Svitolina have entered the history books as the first mothers to be ranked simultaneously inside the Top 10 on the WTA Tour. Their rise marks a significant moment for professional tennis and for the evolving conversation around motherhood and elite sport.<\/p>\n
Bencic, 28, returned<\/a> to competition after giving birth to her daughter Bella in April 2024. Following an 11-month maternity break, the Swiss player climbed one place to ninth in the latest rankings, completing a rapid and disciplined return to the highest tier of the sport. Her trajectory underscores the physical and mental demands of re-entering top-level competition after childbirth.<\/p>\n Svitolina, 31, whose daughter Ska\u00ef was born in October 2022<\/a>, moved up two places to 10th after reaching the semifinals of the Australian Open<\/a>. The Ukrainian, a former World #3 with 19 singles titles, has steadily rebuilt her ranking since returning to the Tour, combining consistency with deep runs at Major tournaments.<\/p>\n Both players have benefited from maternity protections introduced by the WTA, which allow returning mothers to use their previous ranking to enter up to 12 tournaments over a three-year period from childbirth. The Tour has also expanded these protections, enabling players who choose to freeze eggs or embryos to retain ranking safeguards while planning families.<\/p>\n Elsewhere in the rankings<\/a>, Novak Djokovic rose to third in the ATP Tour after reaching the Melbourne final, where he was beaten<\/a> by Carlos Alcaraz. Alcaraz remains world number one, while Jannik Sinner stays second and Alexander Zverev drops to fourth.<\/p>\n Main Photo Credit: Susan Mullane-USA TODAY Sports<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Belinda Bencic and Elina Svitolina have entered the history books as the first mothers to be ranked simultaneously inside the Top 10 on the WTA Tour. Their rise marks a significant moment for professional tennis and for the evolving conversation around motherhood and elite sport. Bencic, 28, returned to competition after giving birth to her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4883,"featured_media":57372,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,9,4],"tags":[85,266,5729,394,5862,22],"class_list":["post-97190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-news","category-wta","tag-alexander-zverev","tag-belinda-bencic","tag-carlos-alcaraz","tag-elina-svitolina","tag-jannik-sinner","tag-novak-djokovic"],"modified_by":"Yesh Ginsburg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4883"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97190"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97190\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":97208,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97190\/revisions\/97208"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}