Women’s Tennis in 2025: A Spectacle of Stars and Surprises
In the 2025 French Open, the top eight seeds in the women’s draw reached the round of 16. Of these, five had reached at least two Grand Slam finals, and the only one who hadn’t, Mirra Andreeva, had just turned 18. Surprise guest Lois Boisson managed to defeat both Andreeva and Jessica Pegula on her way to the semifinals, but the final was a classic between Aryna Sabalenka and the eventual champion, Coco Gauff.
This event demonstrated the power of top-tier stars in women’s tennis. It was the first time since the 2005 Australian Open that the top eight seeds reached at least the fourth round of a Grand Slam. Comparisons to the 2000s are flattering, as the 2005 Australian tournament featured Serena and Venus Williams, Maria Sharapova, Lindsay Davenport, and Amelie Mauresmo, who together would amass 43 Grand Slam titles, 73 final appearances, and 198 quarter-finals. The power of the WTA at that time was extraordinary, and the 2025 Roland Garros tournament almost matched it.
However, Wimbledon 2025 has presented a different picture. Four of the top nine seeds: Gauff, Pegula, Zheng Qinwen (Olympic gold medalist in 2024) and Paula Badosa (semi-finalist at the 2025 Australian Open), fell in the first round. Wimbledon has been a generator of random results on the women’s circuit, and apparently, the record heat in London has made things even more unpredictable than usual.
The depth and power of the stars are subjective. If a high-ranking player is able to lose against a large number of heavyweights or contenders, that could mean that the depth is dynamic, and it could also mean that the elites are not elite enough. Each one sees what they want to see.
In recent weeks, the women’s circuit has offered us both a great display of stellar power in a Grand Slam and an epic exhibition of parity in another. And, despite the surprises of the first round, the second round of the women’s draw is still full of tempting matchups. It seems that the women’s circuit is in better shape than it has been in a long time.Coco Gauff defeated Aryna Sabalenka at the 2025 French Open.
Greatness is a subjective concept, but it can be agreed that induction into the Hall of Fame is a good measure of it. And right now, at least three players who top the women’s rankings are on their way to being included in the future.
Sabalenka, world number 1, has reached 11 semifinals in her last 14 Grand Slams, and has reached the finals of three of them consecutively. She has won three Grand Slams and nine WTA 1000 level tournaments among her 20 professional titles. That is objectively amazing and almost certainly a Hall of Fame resume.
Iga Swiatek, ranked fourth, has five Grand Slam titles and 10 level 1000 titles at age 24. Until her defeat to Sabalenka at this year’s French Open, she was matching Rafael Nadal’s pace in terms of Roland Garros titles at a certain age. Her 125 weeks at number 1 are already the sixth-most in history, behind only Steffi Graf, Martina Navratilova, Serena Williams, Chris Evert, and Martina Hingis. And she is just entering what is generally perceived as her athletic prime.
Coco Gauff, at only 21 years old, has already won two Grand Slams (among 10 total circuit titles) with five Grand Slam semi-finals. She has a 6-5 record against Sabalenka, and after a slow start against Swiatek, she has won three matches in a row against her, all in straight sets. There is no clear list of criteria for being inducted into the Hall of Fame, but it’s obvious that she’s on her way. If she were to retire today, she might have a chance.
If we accept the premise that “future Hall of Famer” is a good indicator of greatness, then let’s think about all the players who have surpassed one of these three undeniable greats. On Tuesday, Gauff not only lost to Dayana Yastremska, but also lost in straight sets. Yastremska has risen to number 21 in the world, reached the semi-finals of the Australian Open in 2024, and has now won five matches against players ranked seventh or higher. Thanks to a string of winter defeats, she entered the tournament unseeded and ranked 42nd in the world. But against Gauff, one of the best returners in the world, she only allowed one break point.
Jelena Ostapenko, for her part, has a Grand Slam title and has a 6-0 record against Swiatek, and defeated Sabalenka in Stuttgart in straight sets. She is currently ranked 21st in the world. Elena Rybakina, a two-time Grand Slam finalist (and one-time champion), has a 4-5 record against Swiatek and has won four of her last seven matches against Sabalenka. She is ranked 11th. Pegula has a solid 11-15 record against this trio of greats, and is more consistent, week after week, than Ostapenko or Rybakina, but has only advanced past the quarterfinals in one Grand Slam. Paolini defeated Gauff in straight sets twice this spring and reached the finals in two Grand Slams last year, but has not advanced past the fourth round in a Grand Slam since Wimbledon 2024.
Many women have shown a great capacity for improvement at this time, so simply showing it and not maintaining it is not enough. You have to perform week after week.
Donna Vekic reached the Wimbledon semi-finals last year, then won silver at the Paris 2024 Olympics, but is only ranked 25th in the WTA rankings. Naomi Osaka, a four-time Grand Slam champion, has a solid 7-11 record against the WTA top 20 since returning from maternity leave in early 2024, but is currently ranked 53rd. Bianca Andreescu, the 2019 US Open champion, defeated both Rybakina and Vekic this spring while recovering from several injuries, but has an 8-8 record on the year and, currently ranked 146th, was out of the Wimbledon qualifying.
Another way to think about depth: To achieve it, it takes multiple generations producing stellar quality talent at the same time. The WTA definitely has it right now.
Using Elo ratings based on Tennis Abstract results, three different age groups (under 23, Gauff, Andreeva, and Zheng, players aged 24-28, Sabalenka, Swiatek, and Rybakina, and those aged 29 or older, Pegula, Paolini, and Keys) each have three of the top nine players in the world. Each category also has at least eight of the top 30. Gauff, Andreeva, Amanda Anisimova (who has just entered the WTA top 10 for the first time), Emma Raducanu, and others are representing Team Young well, but each tournament draw is still packed with veterans with past successes in the Grand Slams: Ons Jabeur (currently 44th), Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova (50th), Danielle Collins (54th), Maria Sakkari (77th), Victoria Azarenka (87th), and some, like Paolini, Keys or Vekic, who have found new gears in the last year.
Winning with something other than your best form is almost impossible at this moment. The bar is so high that, for the grass court tournament in Berlin in June, Jabeur, Sakkari, Sofia Kenin, Anna Kalinskaya and Ajla Tomljanovic (among them: a Grand Slam title, five Grand Slam finals, seven semifinals and 15 quarter-finals) were all in the qualifying draw. And of them, only Kenin reached the main draw.
A Loaded Second Round
Clara Tauson and Anna Kalinskaya will face each other on Thursday.
It may be much more difficult for the stars to remain so at the moment, but their loss is our gain. Even without what seemed to be a big headliner in Zheng against Osaka, the second round of Wimbledon included some deadly matchups like Osaka against Katerina Siniakova, Ashlyn Krueger against Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova and, in particular, Emma Raducanu against Marketa Vondrousova on Wednesday, as well as a couple of fascinating matchups on Thursday:
Clara Tauson vs. Anna Kalinskaya. Kalinskaya struggles with inconsistency at times, but has beaten both Pegula and Keys this year. She has the opportunity to face another rising young player in number 22 and 22-year-old Tauson, who defeated Sabalenka in Dubai in February.
Hailey Baptiste vs. Victoria Mboko. 18-year-old Mboko broke into the top 100 after a great run of success in the lower levels of the sport and defeated number 25 Magdalena Frech as a lucky loser in the first round. Baptiste, for her part, has one of the biggest games on the circuit: she has held serve 60% of the time this year and hit 38 winners in a first-round victory over veteran Sorana Cirstea.
We could also see Swiatek facing Danielle Collins and defending champion Barbora Krejcikova facing Emma Navarro in the third round, as well as Paolini against Anisimova and Swiatek or Collins against Rybakina in the fourth. Take away a lot of stars, and you still have stellar matchups for each round.
A Stellar Place
Emma Raducanu versus Marketa Vondrousova earned a stellar spot on Wednesday.
The matchups are impressive enough that one of them, Raducanu against Vondrousova, was marked as the headline act on center court on Wednesday. That is the first women’s match at that venue in this tournament, and it came after the terrible narrative established at the French Open, where, despite all the star power and chalk on the women’s side, the night sessions on the Philippe-Chatrier court were for the men’s matches for the first 11 nights of the tournament before the semifinals.
Players like Jabeur realized the ongoing disparities, and the famous coach Patrick Mouratoglou entered troubled waters with statements defending the tournament organizers.
The night session is a single match. If it ends in less than an hour (with a player winning 6-1 6-1, for example), the fans will be disappointed. That’s not about gender. It’s about duration and format: men play best of five, women best of three.
Patrick Mouratoglou
It’s technically true, although the Grand Slams themselves decide to make men’s matches best-of-five and women’s matches best-of-three. Women are capable of playing longer matches. Mandating that men play longer matches, and then giving them star places because they play longer matches, is not incredible logic. (Also, five of the 11 men’s seeds in Paris finished in three sets, and four lasted 2:15 or less).
Regardless of the controversy, the women’s circuit is increasingly exciting to follow, and even with the surprising round of upsets in England this week, this is shaping up to be a fascinating fortnight.
