Ten Terrific Things In Tennis In 2025

In the first of his annual three-part review of the past year, Martin Keady, our resident tennis historian, looks back at the best things in the sport in 2025.

Ten Terrific Things In Tennis In 2025

1. The Men’s French Open Final

There is only one place to start any review of the past year in tennis and that is the truly great Men’s French Open Singles final between Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner, which Alcaraz eventually won on a match tie-break after more than five and a half hours. It was the finest tennis match of the year, almost certainly the greatest Men’s French Open final ever, and the occasion that proved conclusively that the era of The Big Three was over and the era of The Huge Two had begun.

Perhaps most importantly, though, the 2025 Men’s French Open Final was a vital reminder of the unique beauty of five-set tennis. The Majors are now the only events in men’s tennis that are still played over five sets and long – indeed, eternally – may that continue. It is only over the course of five sets, which invariably will be played out over as many hours, that tennis separates itself from all other sports and genuinely approaches the realms of epic art, such as a great Shakespeare play or Dickens Novel. Yep, the 2025 Men’s French Open final was that good and hopefully there will be similarly epic encounters between Alcaraz and Sinner in the years, if not decades, ahead.

1. Madison Keys Winning the Australian Open Women’s Singles Title

Having been tipped to win a Major for nearly a decade, Madison Keys finally captured one in Melbourne at the end of January. And the wait was absolutely worth it, as she won her maiden Major in extraordinary fashion, surviving matchpoints against her in both the semifinal (against Iga Swiatek) and the final (against two-time defending champion Aryna Sabalenka). If it wasn’t quite as epic a triumph as Carlos Alcaraz’s in Paris a few months later, it was the closest that any other tennis player got to a truly epic achievement in 2025. And it obviously meant all the more to Keys after so many near-misses and even horror-shows, especially in the 2017 US Open final, over the years.

At the time, it was widely believed that Keys would go on to win multiple Majors, having finally got the “first Major” monkey off her back. However, that did not prove to be the case in 2025, as she performed indifferently, to say the least, in the year’s other Majors, culminating in a disappointingly early exit from her home Major, the US Open, after which she admitted to being consumed by nerves. Clearly, finally winning a Major title has not solved all of her problems, but it certainly solved the biggest one.

1. The Ultra-Competitiveness of Women’s Tennis

Part of the reason that Keys struggled at the year’s other Majors after winning in Melbourne was that so many other female players also stepped up to challenge what had appeared to be a duopoly in women’s tennis in recent years, with Iga Swiatek dominating on clay, Aryna Sabalenka dominating on hardcourt and Wimbledon the unpredictable outlier, as was proved again this year when Swiatek finally won the grasscourt Major that she had never thought she would win.

The ultra-competitiveness of women’s tennis was in stark contrast with the genuine duopoly that Sinner and Alcaraz have established in men’s tennis, whereby for the second year in succession they split the year’s four Majors between them. That ultra-competitiveness also made a mockery of the forthcoming “Battle of the Sexes II” between Aryna Sabalenka and Nick Kyrgios, which is yet another example (after “Woodstock ’99”, “Anthology IV” et al) of the present seemingly having run out of ideas, to the extent that it can now only recycle events from the past without recreating any of their original social and cultural importance. Thankfully, the recent announcement of Mercedes’ title sponsorship of the WTA Tour was an infinitely more valuable validation of the sheer competitiveness of women’s tennis.

1. Jack Draper’s First Half of the Year

Jack Draper must wish that the tennis season did not run from January to November but, like most professional sports, from one summer to the next. That is because his sustained excellence between the 2024 US Open to the summer of 2025 made him probably the third best male tennis player on the planet in that period, behind only Alcaraz and Sinner.

That superb run encompassed Draper’s maiden Major semifinal in 2024, a first ever Masters win at Indian Wells in March 2025 and even – uncharacteristically for a Briton – prolonged success on clay, including a run to the Madrid final. However, just as it seemed that Draper was finally putting behind him all the physical issues that have plagued him throughout his career so far, they returned with a vengeance, effectively curtailing his season halfway through it. As he rebuilds towards full fitness and full form for the start of the 2026 Australian Open next month, he (and we) can only hope that he can maintain his fitness for a whole season and finally challenge Alcaraz and Sinner on an ongoing basis.

1. Aryna Sabalenka Finally Winning The Major That Her 2025 Deserved

For all the fantastic competitiveness of women’s tennis in 2025, as shown by the fact that there were four different winners of the year’s Major Singles titles, one woman was really first among equals, and that was Aryna Sabalenka. Indeed, the World No.1 might even have won a Calendar Grand Slam, the Holy Grail of Tennis, as she lost in the finals of Melbourne and Paris and the semifinal at Wimbledon. Thankfully, she finally won the Major that her 2025 deserved at the US Open in September, retaining her title in New York despite the most spirited of fights by Amanda Anisimova.

Sabalenka had been so dominant throughout 2025, in particular distancing herself from Swiatek while the former World No.1 continued to struggle with a new coach (at least until her surprise Wimbledon triumph), that it would have been a travesty if she had ended the year without a Major title. Finally, after the heartbreak and tantrums of Paris and the near-miss against Anisimova in the Wimbledon semifinal, Sabalenka rubber-stamped her dominance, particularly on hardcourt, by winning the US Open in September. For the future, the challenge remains for her to translate that hardcourt supremacy into success on either (or both) clay or grass. But for the present, she remains the hardest woman to beat, especially on hard.

1. Flavio Cobolli Leading Italy to a “Threepeat” in the Davis Cup

In general, 2025 was not a good year for sportspeople or sports teams trying to achieve a hat-trick of titles, or “threepeat” (as hat-tricks are so often referred to nowadays in sport). There were numerous examples, both in tennis in particular and in sport in general, of players or teams falling at the final hurdle of three: in tennis, Aryna Sabalenka and Carlos Alcaraz failed to achieve title hat-tricks in Melbourne and Wimbledon respectively; and in the wider sporting world, the failed “threepeaters” included the Kansas City Chiefs in the NFL and the Irish men’s rugby union team in the Six Nations Championship.

Consequently, when Jannik Sinner withdrew late in the year from Italy’s Davis Cup defence and Italy’s No.2 man Lorenzo Musetti also pulled out after an exhausting end to the season, there were grave doubts that the Italian men’s team could continue the “Tenaissance” of recent years. However, cometh the hour, cometh The Third Man, as Flavio Cobolli superbly led Italy to a third Davis Cup title in succession. It won’t be easy for him to follow in the footsteps of compatriot Sinner and Novak Djokovic by translating team tennis triumph into individual Major glory. However, after his impressive 2025, which also included a run to the Wimbledon quarterfinals, Cobolli will surely feel that anything is possible.

1. Jasmine Paolini Winning In Rome (and Shenzhen)

Jasmine Paolini’s 2025 couldn’t quite match her breakthrough season in 2024, when she reached the finals at Roland Garros and Wimbledon, but it was still very successful. Not only did she lead Italy to a second Fed Cup triumph in succession in September, but in the spring she became the first Italian woman in 40 years to win the Italian Open, despatching Coco Gauff in straight sets to beat Sinner, Musetti, Cobolli et al to the honour of becoming the first of Italy’s new crop of superstars to win the biggest tournament in Italy.

As many had predicted at the start of the year, Paolini was unable to match her 2024 achievements at the Majors, but the double success of triumphing in Rome and then in Shenzhen in China, which began its hosting of the Fed Cup finals in September, would have been considerable consolation. And the fact that she remained so publicly committed to playing for her country at a time when several top Italian men, led by Sinner, were withdrawing from the Davis Cup will surely only have further endeared her to her fellow Italians.

1. Valentin Vacherot Winning In Shanghai

It says everything about the dominance of men’s tennis by Alcaraz and Sinner that the third biggest story in men’s tennis in 2025 was probably Valentin Vacherot winning the Shanghai Masters in October. Ranked outside the world’s top 200 at the time, he became the lowest-ranked Masters Champion in the history of the Masters series, which began in 1990.

The fact that Vacherot beat his cousin, Arthur Rinderknech, in the Shanghai final only added to the sheer romance of the story, which was in sharp contrast to so much of the near-metronomic success achieved by Alcaraz and Sinner in 2025. Vacherot came from a set down in the final to do so and the only surprise afterwards was that he and Rinderknech did not immediately declare their independence from Monaco and France respectively and enter the Davis Cup as a separate, distinct “Team of Cousins”. Given their scintillating performances in 2025, culminating in Shanghai, they would almost certainly have done better in the Davis Cup than their respective countries.

1. Women Playing at Queen’s For The First Time In Over 50 Years

As this list of highlights from 2025 demonstrates, for much of the year women’s tennis was in much ruder health than men’s tennis. Perhaps the single most damning “stat” about men’s tennis emerged towards the end of the year, when it was revealed that World No.3 Alexander Zverev was actually nearer in points to the World No. 1,000 than he was to the top two of Alcaraz and Sinner. And perhaps the best proof of the relative good health of women’s tennis was the fact that Queen’s Club in London staged its first women’s event in over half a century.

Queen’s 2025 was won by German veteran (and mother) Tatjana Maria, playing a type of tennis (all slices and dices) that would not have looked out of place at Queen’s in the 1970s. And her run from qualification to tournament victory culminated in her defeating Amanda Anisimova in straight sets in the final. Arguably, however, it was Anisimova who was the real beneficiary of the return of women’s tennis to Queen’s, as she recovered from her loss to Maria to reach both the Wimbledon final and the US Open final. Ultimately, she won neither, but the “jump-start” that her run at Queen’s has given her career, particularly on grass, might see her finally win a Major Singles title in 2026.

1. Ons Jabeur Announcing That She Is Pregnant

And finally, a non-tennis story that might just be the best tennis story of 2025. After a fairly disastrous year on tour, during which her most noteworthy contribution was probably her lambasting of French Open director Amelie Mauresmo for still refusing to schedule women’s matches in night sessions in Paris, Ons Jabeur announced in November that she is pregnant with her first child.

Jabeur has never made any secret of her desire to become a mother, to the extent that she would frequently offer to “babysit” the children of other female players on tour, such as Tatjana Maria. And in the past, she has even suggested that she would not fully focus on trying to become a mother until she had won a Major title. That was surely an impossible amount of pressure for anyone to place on themselves and may even have contributed to her slide down the rankings. However, after a fairly terrible year on court, Jabeur has ended it in the best possible style off court, and the whole tennis world celebrated with her (and keeps their fingers crossed for her).

Next time: Ten Terrible Things In Tennis In 2025.