How the Rybakina revival proves women’s tennis is stronger than ever
Nearly three years ago Aryna Sabalenka and Elena Rybakina faced off in the final of the first major of the season. At the time many thought this was the start of a new era in women’s tennis, a kind of ‘Big Three’ consisting of a trio of the most supreme ball-strikers in the game, the aforementioned pair and then-world No 1 Iga Swiatek.
It wasn’t quite to be: Sabalenka fought back from a set down to win her first grand slam title and has since won another three to wrestle top spot off Swiatek. Rybakina, after the high of her 2022 Wimbledon final, slid around the top ten, briefly dropped out of it, and never quite challenged at the same level again.
Several twists and turns later Rybakina is back at the top of the sport, but the landscape of women’s tennis has shifted in that time. Almost three years on from that moment – something of a damp squib, a false dawn – women’s tennis has shaken itself out and, it seems, finally established a defining hierarchy, just in time for the 2026 season.
And the big-hitting Kazakh is part of that. Her resurgence has been quintessentially Rybakina-like: no fuss, little fanfare, just a perfectly timed late-season run of form that catapulted her to the biggest payday in WTA history, celebrated with a trademark gentle fist pump and smile. No histrionics, although the moment was overshadowed somewhat by her refusal to pose for photos with WTA chief executive Portia Archer.
Rybakina’s revival leaves the sport in a fascinating place as the calendar flips to 2026. In some ways 2025 feels like a prequel to next year’s main event, the major players manoeuvring themselves into position, battle lines being drawn, ahead of a grand showdown.
The players in the game are all there. Aryna Sabalenka, who seems to be at her best after a setback, has had multiple this year: agonising defeats in two slam finals and another in Riyadh, indicating there is still more to be done in her ongoing quest to mould herself into the most flawless, impenetrable ball-basher of all time.
Amanda Anisimova, still with the same devastatingly beautiful game that was identified when she was a teenage prodigy, but now with improved mental resilience and confidence in her own ability to match – and seemingly all the better for her nightmare loss in the Wimbledon final.
Coco Gauff, whose serve and forehand remain works in progress but who backed up her own teenage brilliance with a second slam title this year, and looks here to stay.
And the rejuvenated Swiatek, who unlocked a new facet to her game this year with her run to the Wimbledon title, on what has generally been considered her weakest surface, and seemed to rediscover some joy in tennis in the process.
Many times over the last couple of decades the four grand slams have gone to four different women (including seven years in a row from 2017 to 2023, albeit with 2020 only featuring three slams as a result of Covid-19). It happened again in 2025, but this year has felt different.
The four biggest titles went the way of four of the biggest names in the sport; all will finish the year in the top eight, three in the top three. Rybakina, another top-five entry, won the fifth-biggest title of the year (and the biggest paycheck). In each major, the eventual finalists had to see off their biggest rivals to get there; in some, notably Anisimova’s rollercoaster three-set win over Sabalenka at Wimbledon, those blockbuster semi-finals proved more exciting than the final itself.
Women’s tennis in the last decade has suffered from a lack of consistent rivalries and storylines. Part of the clamour around the 2023 Rybakina-Sabalenka final in Melbourne was to do with the excitement of finally having – or seeming to have – a potential long-term rivalry, two players who were so obviously brilliant, who could establish themselves at the top of the sport. It’s taken a little longer than expected, but it now seems those rivalries are there, supplemented by another cluster of players known for their consistency at the highest level (Jessica Pegula) and their potential (Madison Keys, Mirra Andreeva).
That puts women’s tennis in a ‘best of both worlds’ scenario: having multiple top players competing for major honours makes the sport both comparatively unpredictable – in terms of who will actually win – and also reliable, in terms of who will get to the business end of tournaments. Women’s tennis in the immediate post-Serena era was neither; men’s tennis over the last two and a half decades has been both, albeit across two very distinct eons.
The post-Serena era suffered from a sense of drift, with few mega-stars achieving clear cut-through by virtue of being an established top two or three. Ash Barty provided some stability but her retirement ensured the merry-go-round of names winning major tournaments went on, and meant there was rarely a guaranteed blockbuster final. While unpredictability made the sport entertaining, it also provided fodder for the critics, pointing to a lack of consistent quality.
The current era of the ATP Tour, so wholly dominated by Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner, risks disengagement of a different kind. No-one believes any male player can disrupt their hegemony; none of the other players truly think they can either. This year’s US Open was marked by complaints that the first 12 days of the men’s tournament were essentially pointless: everyone knew who was going to be in the final.
Women’s tennis, by contrast, now has a rotation of stars defined as much by their self-belief as by their talent, who are repeatedly facing off against each other for the biggest honours. A wide-open field at the start of a major means there is drama from the start, not just in the final weekend; that jeopardy gives the entire tournament a sense of purpose missing from the men’s side. The sense of genuine rivalry, the clashing personalities, the occasional off-court drama, helps too.
So Rybakina’s win over Sabalenka in Riyadh may not have been the most expected result (although given her 10-match win streak going into it, minus a walkover in Tokyo, it probably should have been) but it encapsulated the narrative of the entire year – and provided the perfect cliffhanger. Roll on next season.
