Women’s tennis season review: Aryna Sabalenka rises, Coco Gauff evolves, Zheng Qinwen breaks through

Tennis is finally taking a breath. After four Grand Slams, 56 more WTA Tour tournaments and the small matter of the 2024 Paris Olympics, the tennis calendar enters its off-season — in which players are mostly found first in the Maldives and then on the practice courts before the new campaign begins in Australia and New Zealand at the end of December.

In a review of the 2024 WTA season, ’s tennis team look back at Aryna Sabalenka and Iga Swiatek’s battle for world No. 1; Zheng Qinwen’s breakthrough; Coco Gauff’s evolution; Jasmine Paolini’s emergence and much more.

They also pick their best and favorite matches, surprises, and moments from another remarkable year in tennis.

Don’t forget to sound off in the comments on your picks — there’s plenty of tennis to review.

How Sabalenka rose to world No. 1 — and how Swiatek might get back there

James Hansen: Sabalenka’s official ascent to world No. 1 was deeply unsatisfying: an unheralded reduction of ranking points for non-participation in mandatory tournaments moved Sabalenka above Swiatek one Monday morning in October. It had nevertheless been coming for some time, especially for Swiatek, who said she thought she would “lose it, like, two weeks ago” in a news conference at the WTA Tour Finals.

Matthew Futterman: Evolution and rest. She expanded on the biomechanical fixes to her serve by adding more variety into her game. She won the biggest points of the U.S. Open semi-final and final against Emma Navarro and Jessica Pegula with short angles, drop shots and volleys, not the frozen-rope winners she used to blast Zheng Qinwen off the court in Melbourne. She also missed Wimbledon, the Olympics and other weeks, the latter because of Belarus’s exclusion from the Billie Jean King Cup, which meant she got time to rest when everybody else was flying around and playing.

Charlie Eccleshare: Not playing the Olympics and Wimbledon was a big thing, even though at the time, missing Wimbledon felt like a massive problem. She talked about the fact that she should have had a break in March (after the death of her former boyfriend) but going into the U.S. hard-court swing fresh was a massive advantage while Swiatek looked to run out of steam around the U.S. Open.

Hansen: The Olympics didn’t define the season, but it probably had a bigger impact than might have been anticipated earlier in the year.

Eccleshare: When we spoke in Riyadh at the WTA Tour Finals, Sabalenka said that when she was first world No. 1 (just before the end of the 2023 season) it felt like “five minutes”, she felt like a pretender. Now she sees herself as someone who should be dominating, and she showed that in Melbourne and then particularly in the hard-court swing towards the end of the year.

Matt Futterman: I don’t know if I see anyone else coming on to challenge Swiatek and Sabalenka passing the world No. 1 back and forth the next few years at the moment. The X factor is Coco Gauff.

A season of two coaches for Gauff, and reflections on the WTA top 10

Hansen: If you were analyzing Gauff’s season — the WTA Tour Finals title, a WTA 1000 title in Beijing, a 250 in Auckland and the women’s doubles title at the French Open — as Gauff, what would you say?

Futterman: She would not have signed up for these results and by that measure she’ll be disappointed. I think she expected to keep accumulating Slams, or at least win one more — and she didn’t make a Slam final, which is what she wants.

Eccleshare: I think you would have to split it into the pre- and post-Brad Gilbert era, given the nature of her losses at Wimbledon and the U.S. Open and the improvements she’s already made to her serve and forehand since then, even though the serve can still leave her at seemingly unexpected moments. Gauff beat Navarro in the semifinals when she won Auckland, so for Navarro to then knock her out of two Grand Slams in a row was a significant measure of where she was before parting ways with Gilbert.

Hansen: Staying on the theme: Who in the WTA top 10 would have signed up for their season and who wouldn’t?

(Records prior to Billie Jean King Cup)

Eccleshare: Zheng and Paolini are the ones who stand out. I think anyone outside of the top three would have signed up for Paolini’s extraordinary year, with two Grand Slam finals, Olympic doubles gold alongside Sara Errani and then winning the Billie Jean King Cup with Italy as well. Then Zheng, Olympic singles gold medalist, Australian Open final, those are the two that have really kicked on. Navarro as well, because she keeps making really steady progress and is easy to overlook because she’s not had quite so many headlines.

Futterman: Well, Barbora Krejcikova would certainly have signed up for a Wimbledon title. The person I would nominate for this would be Danielle Collins, given where she was in January, not even seeded for Grand Slams. For a month-and-a-half in March and April she was probably the best player in the world. She would take that, certainly.

Eccleshare: Elena Rybakina is the one — not even with just results, but in her time with and then split with long-term coach Stefano Vukov, the illnesses and injuries — who will be looking back wondering what might have been. Even just after Stuttgart and then Madrid it looked as if she was poised to have a four-way fight with Swiatek, Sabalenka and Gauff as the best players in the world by quite some distance and it just didn’t work out that way, especially at Wimbledon when she was 1-0 up on Krejcikova with three break points in the second set of their semi-final.

Hansen: The fact Rybakina’s early-season form kept her in the WTA Tour Finals — and that she beat Sabalenka there — maybe suggests that she could be on her way back with Goran Ivanisevic in her box. Who, for you, made the biggest statement on the tour in 2024 with the progress they made from this time last year?

Eccleshare: Zheng. “Statement” is a good word for her because I feel she’s unsettled players at the top of the tour with how she doesn’t take a backwards step. Players sometimes have a breakthrough season but still look overawed; she doesn’t feel that way at all and I think she’s put noses out of joint in a really positive way.

Futterman: Navarro. It was almost all in one match – which she lost – the Maria Sakkari match in Indian Wells. She went toe-to-toe with Sakkari and was really hitting the ball hard, and played with such confidence in her tournaments after that. Even when she won the Hobart International she wasn’t playing with that kind of confidence. Even though Gauff knew more about her than most from their junior days, she didn’t see her coming, not like this.

Hansen: The two players at the center of the strangest beef of the year.

A season of notable comebacks and exciting breakthroughs

Hansen: This was a season of significant returns to the court, for the likes of Naomi Osaka, Paula Badosa and Karolina Muchova among others. Who of those three, who all made progress in different ways, will look back with the most satisfaction?

Eccleshare: Badosa. She’s most improved both her fitness and level. Muchova has achieved more in a single event and has shown that her level is still in the conversation for possibly winning a Grand Slam, but Badosa looks more ready to do a full season and stay fit than the Czech does at the moment given Muchova’s end-of-season injury. Osaka had the same issue and I don’t think she has fully answered the level question yet. Badosa has stitched those two things together the best.

Futterman: I think the weird thing about Osaka — without knowing how serious her back injury is — I think physically she’s right there. The mystery with her is that she’s lost her superpower, which was that the tighter the moment, the better she played. The serves she hit in Grand Slam finals on crunch points were outrageous. The Osaka of 2021 was completely unbothered by losing games, sets, her serve. It didn’t matter, she would win. That’s what she was not able to do in the moments this year, whether it was against Swiatek at the French Open or against Muchova in New York. That was when she would put the hammer down. I don’t know if coach Patrick Mouratoglou can get her there but we will find out.

Hansen: Who of the younger players on the tour made the most significant strides this year?

Eccleshare: Diana Shnaider stands out. She’s not come through and just had one or two impressive results at a Slam: she’s won a title on every surface, one of them a WTA 500; she’s made a WTA 1000 semifinal in Canada. For someone who hasn’t had a huge amount of hype and still has lots of room to improve in terms of her Grand Slam results, she’s the one who stands out for me.

Futterman: I was super impressed with Iva Jovic, the 16-year-old American who beat Magda Linette at the U.S. Open and was a few points away from beating the No. 29 seed Ekaterina Alexandrova in the second round. I think she has the solidity to progress further and that was a heck of a start.

2024 WTA Tour speed-run

Best match:

Iga Swiatek vs. Aryna Sabalenka, Madrid Open final (MF, CE, JH)

Favorite match:

Aryna Sabalenka vs. Jessica Pegula, U.S. Open final (CE)

Donna Vekic vs. Jasmine Paolini, Wimbledon semi-final (MF)

Karolina Muchova vs. Jessica Pegula, U.S. Open semi-final (JH)

Most memorable (not necessarily best!) shot:

Karolina Muchova‘s behind-the-back lob at the U.S. Open (CE)

Aryna Sabalenka‘s cross-court drop shot on set point of the U.S. Open final (MF)

Donna Vekic‘s inside-out forehand return winner down match point to Marta Kostyuk at the Olympics (5-6 in below video) (JH)

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

Tennis, Women’s Tennis

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