In two weeks’ time, the best women’s tennis players in the world will descend on Melbourne for the Australian Open, the first Grand Slam tournament of the season and the first tennis milestone for 2025.
The WTA Tour is intriguingly poised, as world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka and world No. 2 Iga Swiatek prepare to resume their duel for supremacy with a resurgent Coco Gauff and Elena Rybakina ready to make a duet a quartet. Olympic gold medalist Zheng Qinwen, two-time Grand Slam finalist Jasmine Paolini and U.S. Open semifinalist Emma Navarro are looking to build on break-out seasons as Ons Jabeur makes her comeback. And, after its first Tour Finals in Saudi Arabia, the WTA and other figureheads will again reckon with the way inequity affects women in tennis and what it can do better.
The Athletic’s tennis writers, Matthew Futterman and Charlie Eccleshare, outline the biggest women’s tennis storylines for the 2025 season.
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What now for the Swiatek vs. Sabalenka rivalry?
In quality terms, there was no better WTA match than Iga Swiatek’s 7-5, 4-6, 7-6 (7) win over Aryna Sabalenka in the Madrid Open final in May. Their duel at the top of the rankings was an interesting sub-plot throughout 2024, which ultimately led to Sabalenka taking the No. 1 ranking from Swiatek in October.
Where does the rivalry go next? A Grand Slam meeting between the two would be nice, who have somehow met at a major only once before with Swiatek beating Sabalenka in a U.S. Open semifinal two years ago. The ultimate test of a Grand Slam final would be electric; it would also introduce their rivalry to a much wider tennis audience.
At the moment it feels as though Sabalenka is more likely to keep up her end of the bargain. Her recent consistency at the Grand Slams is staggering, reaching at least the semifinals in nine of her past 12 majors. Whereas Swiatek — away from the French Open — has been far less reliable in the majors despite besting Sabalenka on titles and overall win percentage in 2024.
Working with new coach Wim Fissette, Swiatek hopes to rediscover her best form and reignite a rivalry that has been a slow burn since that unforgettable Madrid meeting seven months ago. Sabalenka has added finesse and craft to her brutal power in recent months, with Swiatek starting to do the same under Fissette’s guidance. The difference is that Sabalenka is introducing it to her singles for the first time, where Swiatek used spin, volleys and drop shots with regularity in her breakout 2020 French Open win. If they both continue to evolve — and Swiatek puts her one-month doping ban after a positive test for trimetazidine behind her mentally — 2025 will be a dynamite year for the undisputed two best players on the tour right now.
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Can Zheng take the next step?
Zheng Qinwen was one of tennis’s breakout stars in 2024, reaching the Australian Open final at the start of the year and then winning the Olympic gold medal in August. She ends the season ranked No. 5, announcing herself to the wider world after steadily rising up the ladder over the past couple of years. She is now a huge star in China.
Zheng is also a bit of a disruptor, someone who has ruffled a few feathers on the WTA Tour. Her cold handshakes at the end of matches have become notorious, and she admits that she is happy to operate as a lone wolf. “I prefer (to) always keep the distance with the players,” she said in a news conference at the WTA Finals in Riyadh last month. Becoming friends with her rivals might mean dulling her competitive instincts on the court, and she doesn’t want to take that risk.
Whether or not Zheng can build on last year will be an intriguing WTA sub-plot. Ditto Jasmine Paolini, who continues to defy expectations. Zheng looks better placed thanks to the upward curve of her progress, all built around her formidable serve and one of the heaviest forehands in the game; Paolini should stay in the top 10, but it would be a remarkable feat to match her two Grand Slam finals of 2024.
Zheng Qinwen established herself as a force on the WTA Tour in 2024. (Daniel Kopatsch / Getty Images)
Other players looking to take the next step up and down the rankings include Diana Shnaider, the Russian talent on the cusp of the top 10; Donna Vekic, who came agonizingly close to supplanting Paolini to reach the Wimbledon final; Amanda Anisimova in her first full season back and Naomi Osaka and Emma Raducanu, two former Grand Slam champions who have made no secret of their ambitions to reach the sport’s highest echelons once more.
Will Gauff and Rybakina challenge the top two?
There was a stretch from roughly the late summer of 2023 until the early spring of 2024 when women’s tennis appeared headed toward something that resembled a ‘Big Four’: Sabalenka, Swiatek, Rybakina and Gauff.
But then Rybakina ran into a string of lingering health problems and Gauff had her own serve and forehand problems. Zheng, Navarro, Paolini, and Wimbledon champion Barbora Krejcikova also had something to say about that narrative in 2024.
But now Rybakina and Gauff have started doing what they can to get back into the elite tier. Rybakina hired Goran Ivanisevic to coach her for the 2025 season. Gauff made a less headline-grabbing move, hiring a largely unknown coach named Matt Daly, who specializes in grip alterations, after she parted ways with Brad Gilbert. She promptly won both the WTA 1000 in Beijing and the WTA Tour Finals to salvage a year that didn’t meet with her expectations. When those two shots are reliable, Gauff can beat anybody. Rybakina, with her devastating serve and an ominous serenity to her play when she is on, is just as capable.
There’s an argument to be made that the quartet is back in business. Given the more common chaos at the top of women’s tennis, there’s likely a better argument to be made that nobody knows what the top four will be come this time next year, Swiatek and Sabalenka apart.
Does Ons Jabeur have a big comeback in her?
There would be few more popular champions than the “minister for happiness” Ons Jabeur, the three-time Grand Slam finalist who put on hold her plans to start a family until she claimed a major title.
Unfortunately for her that maiden Grand Slam remains not just elusive, but further away than it has been for a while. Knee and shoulder injuries wrecked her 2024 season, with the Tunisian speaking about needing regular knee injections to be able to play following a third-round defeat to Elina Svitolina at Wimbledon in July. It was no surprise when she ended her season early in September, having withdrawn from the U.S. Open prior.
Tennis is a sport of improbable comebacks and Jabeur, 30, will be hoping for one of her own. To come back from this kind of injury after so much Grand Slam heartache would be one for the ages, delighting the tennis world as much as her dedicated fans.
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My game in my words. By Ons Jabeur
Will there be greater strides in equity in 2025?
Women’s tennis made some progress towards something approaching equity in 2024.
Equal pay at the biggest tournaments outside the Grand Slams is either here or on the way, depending on the event. The WTA Tour Finals regained some legitimacy with $15 million (£11.9m) in prize money. That’s on par with the men, though the WTA had to go to Saudi Arabia, which doesn’t treat women as equal citizens, to get it.
The Grand Slams and several of the other top tournaments are clearly making an effort to put the women on the show courts as often as the men. The current leadership of the ATP understands that their own events are more valuable when women and men play together.
Major work remains, however. The French Open continues to embarrass itself by refusing to put the women in the fabled night session on Court Philippe Chatrier, the biggest court at Roland Garros. A former women’s No. 1, Amelie Mauresmo, is the tournament director, which makes the situation tragic and laughable all at once.
Also, too often there are too many empty seats at women’s tournaments, making the sport look like a minor league affair during so many weeks. The empty seats send a message to everyone who sees the product on television: ‘nothing too important happening here’.
The tours and the tournaments need to fix that. What’s the answer? Better marketing? Ticket giveaways? A functional social media and highlights presence? All of the above. And more.
Two WTA players to watch
Mirra Andreeva and Iva Jovic are at the top of the list, for different reasons and in different zones of the rankings.
Andreeva, the young Russian star, made big strides in 2024. She can win on every surface. She’s still only 17, and she’s reached that point in her career where she is older than her ranking (No. 16), always a sweet milestone. She plays a kind of zen tennis, mixing power and intelligence and shotmaking beyond her years. She’s also got one of the proven tennis minds in her corner in Conchita Martinez, a Grown-Up with a capital G who could be the perfect person to guide her through these evolutionary years. At this point, it would be something of a surprise if she doesn’t make a Grand Slam final this year.
Mirra Andreeva is one of the most accomplished young players in the world. (Francois Nel / Getty Images)
Jovic is another 17-year-old, an American who didn’t get nearly as much fanfare growing up as some of her contemporaries. She’s raw, but heating up in a hurry: Jovic received a wild card for the U.S. Open at 16, where she beat Magda Linnette, who was twice her age and ranked 347 places at the time. Jovic then went a set up against and had great chances to beat No. 28 seed Ekaterina Alexandrova, losing in three sets on the hottest day of the tournament. There’s an expression about young baseball players: the good ones aren’t afraid of the field.
Jovic is not afraid of the tennis court.
(Top photo of Aryna Sabalenka and Iga Swiatek: Robert Prange / Getty Images)
