Kim Clijsters displaced Vera Zvonareva for second spot as Serena Williams fell out of the top 10.
Caroline Wozniacki is the number 1 player in the world at the moment but Kim Clijsters is hot on the Dane's trail. Clijsters won the Australian Open over the weekend and as a result she is up to world number 2 with the January 31st rankings.
Wozniacki holds just a 140 ranking point edge over Clijsters at the moment and that is a very fragile lead based on how well the Belgian played at Melbourne Park.
Other players that made a jump in the standings include Francesca Schiavone, as she climbed from 7th to 4th. With Schiavone age is no matter as she has now achieved her career high ranking at the age of 30, an age when most tennis players are starting to falter.
Australian Open runnerup Li Na is another veteran on tour who has ascended to new heights as she is back into the top 10, now ranked 7th - a career best ranking for her.
Players outside the top 10 that jumped up significantly include Maria Sharapova (16th to 13th), Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova (18th to 14th; career high ranking), Flavia Pennetta (25th to 16th), and Petra Kvitova (28th to 18th).
Andrea Petkovic, a quarterfinalist, is up to 24th from 33rd while 4th rounder Anastasija Sevastova jumped up 10 spots to 36th.
Chanelle Scheepers of South Africa is the biggest jumper in the top 100 as she ascended to 80th (career high) with a third round performance in Melbourne, an improvement of 27 spots. Young talent Rebecca Marino of Canada made a huge stride as the 20 year old jumped up 20 spots to 84th (career high).
Now let's look at some of the players that descended due to the results from the Australian Open.
Serena Williams - down 8 spots from 4th to 12th.
Nadia Petrova - down 5 spots from 15th to 20th.
Maria Kirilenko - down 6 spots from 19th to 25th.
Jie Zheng - down 16 spots from 27th to 43rd.
Dinara Safina - down 42 spots from 75th to 117th
Safina's plight really is a sad story as the world number 1 from just 10 months ago, now ranked 117th, could be struggling to get into the field of the big tournament draws in the near future.
