Halep reaches 11th in WTA rankings after sixth win of 2013

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla., Nov. 4 (UPI) -- Simona Halep, who hadn't won a WTA title until June, now has six championships this year and is close to joining the women's tennis Top 10.

Halep defeated Samantha Stosur in three sets Sunday, winning the WTA's Tournament of Champions. Only world No. 1 Serena Williams, with 11 championships, won more in 2013 and no other player won more than three singles titles.

Halep was 0-3 in WTA finals until June 15 when she won the tour stop in Nuremberg, Germany. A week later she added a championship in the Netherlands and three weeks after that won in Hungary.

Halep took titles in Connecticut in August and Moscow in September, where she also beat Stosur in the finals.

She has 3,335 ranking points and a career-high No. 11 world ranking, up three places from last week. She is just 185 points back of 10th-ranked Caroline Wozniacki.

Stosur improves her ranking from 19th to No. 18.

Zhang Shuai won the WTA 125K series tournament in Nanjing, China. The victory jumps her to No. 51 in the rankings. She was 62nd at the start of last week.

The Tournament of Champions was the last WTA main event until the end of the December when the 2014 schedule starts with tournaments in Auckland, New Zealand; Brisbane, Australia; and Shenzhen, China.

The WTA Top 10, listing player's name, home country and rankings points:

1. Serena Williams, United States, 13,260

2. Victoria Azarenka, Belarus, 8,046

3. Li Na, China, 6,045 18

4. Maria Sharapova, Russia, 5,891

5. Agnieszka Radwanska, Poland, 5,875

6. Petra Kvitova, Czech Republic, 4,775

7. Sara Errani, Italy, 4,435

8. Jelena Jankovic, Serbia, 4,170

9. Angelique Kerber, Germany, 3,965

10. Caroline Wozniacki, Denmark, 3,520