Taipei, Aug. 30 (CNA) Taiwan's top female badminton player Tai Tzu-ying (戴資穎) has again claimed the world No. 1 ranking in women's singles, overtaking Akane Yamaguchi of Japan because of how the rankings work.
In principle, Yamaguchi, who captured the women's singles titles at the badminton World Championships in Tokyo on Sunday, should have stayed above Tai, who finished in joint third place.
Instead, Tai climbed one spot from second by holding on to her 110,845 ranking points, above Yamaguchi's 109,413 in the latest rankings.
The current ranking system is in a transition period, and in this case it helped Tai jump above the Japanese.
The BWF froze its world rankings and world junior rankings on March 31, 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and resumed them on Feb. 2, 2021, but they have continued to consider players' 10 best results for tournaments played as far back as 2019.
That is in contrast to the normal system, which only takes into account each player's 10 best point totals over a previous 52-week period.
From Aug. 2, however, four weeks of historical ranking points are being removed from the rankings system each week starting from week 12 of 2019, in the hope of returning to the usual 52-week ranking system by Jan. 3, 2023, according to sports website Inside the Games.
In this week's rankings, Tai did not have to defend any points from the 2019 events that were removed.
Yamaguchi, on the other hand, lost 12,000 points and 11,000 points for first-place finishes at the Indonesia Open and Japan Open in 2019, and they were replaced by the 13,000 points she picked up for winning the world championship and 8,400 from another event, resulting in a net loss of points.
It was the sixth time in Tai's career that she has held the world's top women's singles rankings.
