Kim Birrell has been left reflecting on an emotional and thrilling breakthrough day for Australian women's tennis in south-east Asia as she scooped the first WTA title of her career while, extraordinarily, also losing her national no.1 ranking.
Birrell rocketed into the world’s top-50 for the first time with her long awaited maiden triumph at the Korea Open WTA 250 event while admitting her landmark day wasn’t easy as she'd had to get there by beating her Australian pal Maya Joint in the final.
Yet while the popular 28-year-old Queenslander was celebrating her victory with sympathetic words for her young tearful compatriot, she can hardly have credited that another of her friends Talia Gibson was meanwhile annexing her Australian No.1 ranking elsewhere on the Asian swing.
Gibson, another player enjoying a breakthrough 2026 campaign, had reached the Singapore Open final on the same day and even though she lost to Canadian Leylah Fernandez, missing out on her maiden title, her big points haul at the bigger WTA 500 event meant she will actually leapfrog Birrell in the rankings.
Birrell capped her breakthrough year, which had featured a sensational win over Jessica Pegula in the French Open, with a 6-4 6-2 victory over her error-strewn young pal Joint in the Seoul final.
It was the first all-Australian WTA championship match since Sam Stosur beat Daria Gavrilova (now Saville) at Strasbourg in 2017, with Queenslander Birrell ending up finally lifting a trophy after losing her two previous finals in Osaka in 2024 and Chennai last year.
But this was much harder. “It was quite difficult for us today because we are very good friends,” she explained on court, before turning to 20-year-old Joint and saying: "You’ve had a tough year, I know. I hope you know how proud I am of you and how many amazing you are.”
Joint, indeed, has had an up-and-down year, with a back injury and a long losing sequence finally ended when she earned her triumph over the returning Serena Williams at Wimbledon that made worldwide headlines.
But Joint wasn't really in the picture in Sunday's final after she'd taken a 2-0 lead as Birrell, who'd had to negotiate three three-setters en route to the final, took advantage of 41 unforced errors from the young Queenslander's racquet as she prevailed in an hour 23 minutes.
“It’s tough against a friend and I’m really proud of you,” Joint said, congratulating her compatriot who will jump 19 places from No.60 to a career-high No.41.
But that still wasn't enough to stop Gibson, who lost nine games in a row to succumb 7-5 6-0 to former US Open finalist Fernandez, advancing 26 places to No.37 in the world when the new rankings are published. The 22-year-old was at No.118 when the year started.
“Hopefully, this is the first of many more finals to come,” said Gibson, at the end of a week in which she made both her first WTA semi-final and final after defeating No.6 seed Maria Sakkari in the quarters.
There are five Australian women in the top-100, with Joint moving up to No.75, Daria Kasatkina at 87 and Taylah Preston at 91, while Ajla Tomljanovic is at 103.
