(Melbourne, AUS) - Caroline Wozniacki will lose her number one ranking after her Australian Open quarter-final defeat to defending champion Kim Clijsters on Tuesday, according to official calculations.
The 21-year-old Dane has occupied the top spot for all but one week since October 11, 2010, but she will now be replaced by either Petra Kvitova, Victoria Azarenka or Maria Sharapova.
In the new rankings to be published next Monday, French Open champion Li Na, who fell to Clijsters in the fourth round, will slip to ninth in the world, Women's Tennis Association (WTA) projections show.
China's Li will lose the points she earned for finishing as runner-up to Belgium's Clijsters in 2011, resulting in a drop of three places from number six.
US Open champion Samantha Stosurâ??s first-round loss has not done her significant harm, with the Australian set to stay at number five.
And former world number one Ana Ivanovic of Serbia, who lost in the fourth round to Czech second seed Kvitova, is projected to return to the top 20. She is currently ranked number 22.
Despite her long reign at the top, Wozniacki has failed to win a grand slam, with critics saying she could not be considered the best player in the world until she takes one of the sport's major prizes.
Tennis great Martina Navratilova weighed into the debate on Monday, saying the women's game was crying out for a new star and the rankings were weighted too much towards quantity of matches, rather than quality of opposition.
"Clearly nobody feels that Wozniacki is a true number one," she said.
"If we still had the same ranking system we were using six years ago when they were giving bonus points for beating players, Kvitova would have ended up number one because she had beaten more top players than Wozniacki."
Azarenka also reached the semi-finals on Tuesday after beating Agnieszka Radwanska, while Sharapova and Kvitova play their last-four matches on Wednesday.
