Lowest-ranked title winners featuring Kim Clijsters and Elina Svitolina
Seventeen players have won a WTA singles titles while ranked 200 or lower and three of them have lifted a trophy without being ranked since the inception of the rankings in 1973.
Two of the unranked players who have won a singles title have actually achieved the feat at a Grand Slam with former world No 1 Kim Clijsters the most recent player to notch up the milestone.
The 10 players who don’t make the top seven are Tamira Paszek, who was ranked No 259 when she won the title in Portoroz in 2006, Maria Timofeeva (No 246 – 2023 Budapest), Tatjana Maria (No 237 – 2022 Bogotá), Lindsay Davenport (No 234 – 2007 Bali), Marketa Vondrousova (No 233 – 2017 Biel Bienne), Alexandra Dulgheru (No 209 – 2009 Warsaw), Melanie Oudin (No 208 – 2012 Birmingham), Federica Haumüller (No 207 – 1989 Guaruja), Kumiko Okamoto (No 205 – 1989 Tokyo) and Petra Langrova (No 201 – 1988 Paris).
The 7 lowest-ranked women to win a WTA singles title:
7. Fabiola Zuluaga – No 285
Incredibly, Fabiola Zuluaga won five WTA Tour singles titles and four of them were at the Copa Colsanitas.
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Unsurprisingly, her historic run came at the Colombian event in 2002 when she had slipped down the rankings and required a wildcard to enter the tournament.
The Colombian surged to No 140 after her win and finished the year inside the top 70.
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6. Margarita Gasparyan – No 299
Russian Margarita Gasparyan won her maiden title in Baku in 2015 and she had to wait another three years before lifting another trophy as she struggled with injuries.
By the time she took part in the Tashkent Open in September 2018, she had slipped to No 299 in the WTA Rankings but used her protected ranking to enter the event.
She upset fifth seed Tatjana Maria in the second round and went on to beat qualifier Anastasia Potapova in the final.
5. Elina Svitolina – No 508
Elina Svitolina became the lowest-ranked player in 14 years to win a title when she lifted the Internationaux de Strasbourg trophy in 2023.
The Ukrainian announced she was pregnant in May 2022 and gave birth to her and Gael Monfils’ first child, a daughter named Skai in October. She returned to action in April 2023 with a ranking of 1344 before making a steady climb up the list with some good wins.
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She was handed a wildcard for the Strasbourg tournament as she was ranked No 508, reaching the final before defeating Anna Blinkova in straight sets. She jumped to NO 192 with her title run.
4. Angelique Widjaja – No 579
Angelique Widjaja won the Wimbledon junior title in 2001, beating Dinara Safina in the final, and later in the year she claimed her maiden WTA Tour singles title.
Aged just 16, the Indonesian entered her maiden WTA event, the 2001 Wismilak International, thanks to a wildcard and she went all the way.
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Widjaja defeated the likes of Alicia Molik, Tamarine Tanasugarn and Hsieh Su-Wei en route to the final before getting the better of eighth seed Joannette Kruger.
=1. Chris O’Neil – Unranked
Australian great Chris O’Neil became the first-ever unranked player to win a women’s singles title since the inception of the rankings in June 1973 and she did it at a Grand Slam.
O’Neil defeated Betsy Nagelsen in the 1978 Australian Open final to win her one and only singles title. In fact, she didn’t reach another final after that as she peaked at No 80 in the rankings. It was also the one and only time O’Neil made it past the third round of a major.
=1. Mirjana Lucic-Baroni – Unranked
Nearly two decades after O’Neil’s feat, Mirjana Lucic-Baroni became the second unranked player to win a singles title.
She was a protégé as she won the 1998 Australian Open women’s doubles title alongside Martina Hingis at the age of 15, but at that stage was already a WTA singles title winner.
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Lucic-Baroni entered the 1997 Croatian Ladies Open as a qualifier and she defeated two seeded players to reach the final before getting the better of Corina Morariu for her first title.
=1. Kim Clijsters – Unranked
It took another 12 years for another unranked player to win a title and this time it was on the Grand Slam stage as Kim Clijsters produced the heroics at the 2009 US Open.
The Belgian had won the 2005 US Open, but she retired at the age of 23 in 2007 and not long after she tied the knot and gave birth to her daughter Jada in 2008.
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She made a comeback in 2009 and was handed a wildcard entry into the US Open and she was unranked at the time. She defeated Marion Bartoli (14th seed), Venus Williams (3), Li Na (18) and Serena Williams (2) to reach the final.
Clijsters beat fifth seed Caroline Wozniacki in straight sets in the final to win her second Grand Slam title
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