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Women’s tennis season review: The best WTA matches, players and moments of 2025

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As tennis prepares for the 2026 season — which is, for once, starting in the year for which it is named — here is a spirited lookback at the past year on the WTA Tour. It is not designed to be entirely complete, and your views on the categories in the speed run at the bottom are one of the most exciting things about such an exercise. This is in the spirit of what first springs to mind, in a banner year for women’s tennis that set up the next one beautifully. Best match Charlie Eccleshare, Matthew Futterman: Madison Keys (19) vs. Iga Świątek (2), Australian Open semifinal Eccleshare : It could have been her final win against Aryna Sabalenka, but just pipping it is Madison Keys’ Australian Open semifinal win over Iga Świątek . When Świątek went from 5-2 up to 5-5, but still won the first set, it looked as though this was going to be another hard-luck story for Keys, who had never won the Grand Slam title that was supposedly her destiny. It looked that way again in the third set, when Ś...

College tennis star behind prize money lawsuit, Reese Brantmeier, wins NCAA championship

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Reese Brantmeier couldn’t help but have a laugh at the irony of her winning the NCAA women’s tennis singles championship after a 6-3, 6-3 win over Berta Passola Folch of the University of California-Berkeley Sunday afternoon. “A few people have pointed it out to me,” she said, before taking on a more serious tone in a Sunday afternoon interview. “This title is so meaningful, this is the pinnacle of college tennis,” she said. “It’s a great accomplishment, independent of some of our legal disagreements.” Brantmeier, 21, is arguably the most famous player in college tennis. The University of North Carolina player is lead plaintiff in a lawsuit against the NCAA, which aims to overturn the rule prohibiting tennis players from collecting prize money above $10,000 per year at professional tournaments. Pre-enrolment, any prize money above $10,000 must be used as expenses on the tournament in which it was earned; post-enrolment, prize money is attributed to annual expenses. A senior with a doub...

Elena Rybakina declines photo with women’s tennis chief at WTA Tour Finals trophy ceremony

New WTA Tour Finals champion Elena Rybakina declined a photo with WTA Tour chief executive Portia Archer during Saturday’s trophy ceremony in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in the wake of the tour’s investigation into her coach, Stefano Vukov . Rybakina posed with runner-up Aryna Sabalenka, whom she had defeated 6-3, 7-6(0), but when Archer joined Sabalenka, Rybakina stood away to the right-hand side of the duo. A male official gestured toward Rybakina to join the two women for a picture, but she raised a hand and remained alone. Rybakina refused to take a pic next to the WTA CEO? 👀 pic.twitter.com/A92ps4LLYl — Lorena Popa 🕵️‍♀️🎾 (@popalorena) November 8, 2025 A WTA Tour spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Rybakina initially declined to comment when asked about the snub in her news conference, but when asked again — and asked whether or not she had had discussions with the tour about the investigation — she said: “Well, I think we’re all doing our job, and we...

WTA Tour Finals results: Iga Świątek and Elena Rybakina dominate Day 1 in Riyadh

The 2025 WTA Tour Finals began November 1 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia , with the top eight singles players and doubles pairs in the world battling for supremacy and Iga Świątek and Elena Rybakina dominating the opening day. Świątek dispatched Australian Open champion Madison Keys 6-1, 6-2 on her return to tennis from injury, while Rybakina produced a similarly ruthless performance against Amanda Anisimova in a 6-3, 6-1 win. Four different players won Grand Slam singles titles this year, with Keys taking the Australian Open , Coco Gauff the French Open , Świątek Wimbledon and Aryna Sabalenka the U.S. Open . Sabalenka, the world No. 1, and Świątek, the world No. 2, were kept apart in the group-stage draw, with the other six players sorted into pots of two. The four Grand Slam champions are joined by Anisimova, who this year reached two Grand Slam finals; Jessica Pegula; Jasmine Paolini and Rybakina. In a thrilling conclusion to the regular season, Rybakina overtook Mirra Andreeva at the l...

Tennis outlet says it altered Marta Kostyuk interview about Aryna Sabalenka, Iga Świątek

Comments by Ukrainian tennis player Marta Kostyuk in which she mentioned “testosterone levels” in comparing herself with the two top women’s tennis players were distorted by a question that was not asked, tennis outlet Tennis365 appeared to acknowledge Thursday. Before walking back its original version of the article, Tennis365 had said it asked Kostyuk in an interview from the Wuhan Open in China: “Do you feel intimidated by players like Iga Świątek and Aryna Sabalenka?” The outlet said Kostyuk responded: “We all have our own biological structure. Some have a higher level of testosterone, some have lower. It’s just natural and that definitely helps.” But in a story published Thursday, Tennis365 said that it had “inserted” the question about intimidation between two parts of Kostyuk’s answer to a different question. The original story also used two questions that were not included in its updated recap of the interview, but Tennis365 did not acknowledge those changes in its clarificat...

China Open injury retirements lay bare tennis schedule complaints from top players

Five of Monday’s 12 matches at the ATP and WTA China Opens ended in mid-match retirements, raising more questions of the long-term sustainability of the tennis calendar . The length of the sport’s off-season, and the increased mandatory event requirements on the WTA Tour, formed a large part of the lawsuit launched by the Professional Tennis Players Association (PTPA) against the sport’s governing bodies in March. Player discontent has intensified over those changes, and it was on show again in Beijing after three out of the eight women’s matches and two of the four men’s finished prematurely. Home favorite Zheng Qinwen retired against Czechia’s Linda Nosková in the third set of their match; Camila Osorio of Colombia did so after losing the first set 6-0 to world No. 2 Iga Świątek, and France’s Loïs Boisson called it a day early in the second set against Emma Navarro of the U.S.. On the men’s side, Jakub Menšík, also Czech, lasted just five games before retiring against Australia’s A...