The 2025 WTA Tour season has come to an end with Elena Rybakina winning the final tournament of the campaign while Aryna Sabalenka finishes the year where she started: at No 1.
Rybakina completed her brilliant late-season charge by beating Sabalenka in the final of the WTA Finals to win the second-biggest title of her career following her 2022 success at Wimbledon.
And she did it in style, winning the tournament undefeated as she beat Amanda Anisimova, Iga Swiatek and Ekaterina Alexandrova during the group phase before holding off Jessica Pegula in three sets in the semi-final. In the final, she overcame Sabalenka 6-3, 7-6 (7-0) to win the year-end event for the first time in her career.
The five wins in Riyadh earned her 1,500 points and she moved up one place in the WTA Rankings to No 5, which is just reward for her excellent form since the start of the Asian swing as she was down at No 10 on September 15.
The Kazakh star – who peaked at No 3 in the rankings in June 2023 – reached the quarter-final of the Wuhan Open, won the Ningbo Open and made it to the semi-final of the Pan Pacific Open before completing her run with the title in Saudi Arabia.
Besides the 1,500 ranking points, Rybakina also earned $5,235,000 – a record in women’s tennis – for winning the WTA Finals undefeated.
But the WTA Rankings star of the year was undoubtedly Sabalenka as she will complete a full calendar at No 1, having wrapped up the year-end top spot before the WTA Finals.
The Belarusian finished the 2024 season on 9,416 points and she has gone better in 2025 as she finishes on 10,870 points with her biggest gains coming from her US Open victory, runners-up spots at the Australian Open, French Open and WTA Finals, and Miami Open and Madrid Open titles.
The four-time Grand Slam winner will start the 2026 season with a 2,475-point lead over Iga Swiatek, who in turn is 1,632 points ahead of Coco Gauff.
Although Gauff exited the WTA Finals after the round-robin stage, she managed to hold off Amanda Anisimova in the battle for the American year-end No 1 spot as the latter’s run to the semi-final saw her move to within 476 points.
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Despite reaching the last four, Pegula drops one place – although it is more a case of Rybakina moving up a spot – while the rest of the top 50 remains unchanged as the regular WTA Tour season finished last week.
However, there are still some WTA 125 tournaments and ITF events scheduled until early December and there was some movement lower down the list as Renata Zarazua climbed 12 places to No 70 after winning the Austin 125.
Oleksandra Oliynykova was the other WTA 125 title winner last week as she won the event in Tucuman, Argentina, to rise 23 spots to No 109.
But the top 20 will remain the same for the rest of the 2025 season, but please do keep an eye out for our 2025 WTA Rankings Winners & Losers that will feature the likes of Sabalenka, Victoria Mboko and Alex Eala.
WTA Rankings Top 20
1. Aryna Sabalenka – 10,870 points
2. Iga Swiatek Poland – 8,395
3. Coco Gauff United States – 6,763
4. Amanda Anisimova United States – 6,287
5. Elena Rybakina Kazakhstan – 5,850 (+1)
6. Jessica Pegula United States – 5,583 (-1)
7. Madison Keys United States – 4,335
8. Jasmine Paolini Italy – 4,325
9. Mirra Andreeva – 4,319
10. Ekaterina Alexandrova – 3,375
11. Belinda Bencic Switzerland – 3,168
12. Clara Tauson Denmark – 2,770
13. Linda Noskova Czech Republic – 2,641
14. Elina Svitolina Ukraine – 2,595
15. Emma Navarro United States – 2,515
16. Naomi Osaka Japan – 2,487
17. Luidmila Sansonova – 2,209
18. Victoria Mboko Canada – 2,157 (+3)
19. Karolina Muchova Czech Republic – 1,996
20. Elise Mertens Belgium – 1,969
The post WTA Rankings: Sabalenka’s year at No 1, Gauff wins American No 1 battle, Rybakina ends on a high appeared first on Tennis365.
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