Romanian tennis player Simona Halep will surpass Chinese Na Li to become number two in the WTA ranking. This comes after Na Li announced she will not compete in the main North American tennis tournaments in the next two months due to a knee injury.

Na Li said on her Facebook account that she will not play in Montreal, Cincinnati and in the US Open at Flushing Meadows. She will lose all the 1,690 points she won last year in these three tournaments. Na Li currently has 6,960 points in the WTA ranking, 175 more than Romania’s Simona Halep. The official change in the ranking will be made on August 11, when Simona Halep will become the best ranked Romanian woman tennis player ever, according to Digi Sport TV station.

Halep might thus enter the US Open as second favorite of the competition, after the WTA leader Serena Williams.

Halep reached the podium of the WTA ranking of the best women tennis players in the world after playing the final at the French Open in Roland Garros, her first grand slam final, at the beginning of June this year. She lost that final to Russian player Maria Sharapova.

Halep got to the semifinals in Wimbledon and after that she won the Bucharest BRD Open in mid-July.

editor@romania-insider.com