Elena Rybakina paints the lines to triumph over Aryna Sabalenka at WTA Tour Finals

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — Elena Rybakina won the biggest prize in the history of women’s sports, beating Aryna Sabalenka 6-3, 7-6(0) on Saturday to win the 2025 WTA Tour Finals and just under $5.3 million.

This win capped a late-season surge from Rybakina, the 2022 Wimbledon champion who was struggling to find her top form for much of the first two-thirds of the year. But with one of the biggest titles of the season on the line, Rybakina played a near-flawless match, relentlessly attacking Sabalenka and sending her to yet another wrenching final defeat, in a season that has included both highs and heartbreak.

After losing the first set, Sabalenka flirted with doom through much of the second. Rybakina, who mostly rolled through her own service games, earned two break points at 1-1 and two more at 4-4. But Sabalenka blasted her way out of trouble with big serves.

Missing those opportunities to get to serve out the match appeared to throw off Rybakina. She double-faulted to start the next game, then missed a series of rally balls to give Sabalenka two chances to draw even at 1-1 in sets.

A lucky net cord off a groundstroke helped Rybakina save the first one, just as a net cord had thrown off her semifinal opponent Jessica Pegula down the stretch. But Sabalenka missed badly when returning a kicking second serve on the next one, and four points later, the Belarusian crushed a sitter of a forehand into the net and Rybakina remained in the hunt for a straight-sets win.

Two games later, they went to tiebreak, Sabalenka’s specialty. She was 22-2 in tiebreaks this season. But she fell behind in a hurry, with three balls into the net and two off the court, to go down 0-5. Rybakina blasted yet another ace for 6-0, her 13th of the evening. Sabalenka sent the next return wide and that was that.

Sabalenka stuffed her racket in her bag, shook Rybakina’s hand, then headed to her box, where she sat in tears, once more having failed to produce anything close to her best tennis in a big match.

The loss ends a wildly successful but weird year for Sabalenka. She was the world No. 1 from wire-to-wire, even as she skipped two of the most important tournaments on the tour, the WTA 1000 events in Montreal and Beijing. She made the four of the five biggest finals of the season, including at three of the Grand Slams and at the Tour Finals, far more than her competition.

But her record in those four matches is 1-3. Add to that a heartbreaking semifinal loss in three sets to Amanda Anisimova at Wimbledon, plus a similar loss to Mirra Andreeva in the final of the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells, and Sabalenka’s year was awesome and agonizing all at once.

Through the first half of the season, Rybakina played her tennis against the turbulent backdrop of an investigation into her coach, Stefano Vukov.

January 1, Rybakina announced that Vukov would rejoin her team, after she fired him during the 2024 U.S. Open. But Vukov was barred from obtaining WTA credentials and from attending events, while under investigation for breaching the organization’s code of conduct.

By February, the WTA Tour had suspended Vukov for one year, with chief executive Portia Archer writing in a confidential summary of the investigation, obtained by The Athletic, that Vukov had violated the code of conduct by: “Engaging in abuse of authority and abusive conduct towards the WTA Player, including compromising or attempting to compromise the psychological, physical or emotional well-being of the Player; engaging in physical and verbal abuse of the Player; and, exploiting your relationship with the Player for further personal and/or business interests at the expense of the best interest of the Player.”

During the investigation, Rybakina publicly maintained that Vukov had “never mistreated her,” and the coach appealed the suspension ahead of this year’s French Open. It was lifted in August, after Vukov and the WTA entered into private arbitration. After her victory Saturday, Rybakina refused to stand next to Archer during the trophy ceremony, as is customary.

His violations included refusing to leave Rybakina’s New York hotel in 2024 after a representative for the player told him he had been fired. Vukov flooded Rybakina’s phone with text messages and more than 100 calls — according to sources with personal and professional relationships with Rybakina who were present at the hotel — as he sought another chance to convince Rybakina that her tennis career could not thrive without him.

“Definitely never abused anyone,” Vukov wrote in a text message sent to The Athletic in January. Vukov was traveling with Rybakina for much of the season. He was barred from being credentialed at a tournament, and he was prohibited from being in any player areas with her, including on practice courts.

Rybakina, a native Russian who represents Kazakhstan, spoke of struggling to sleep through late 2024 and early 2025. Her play and her health suffered, with multiple earlier-than-usual losses at big tournaments. Once considered part of a new women’s “big three” along Aryna Sabalenka and Iga Świątek, Rybakina’s ranking slipped into the double digits.

She qualified as the No. 7 seed after a string of wins to edge out Russia’s Mirra Andreeva, and through that run and in Riyadh she has played the smooth, devastating tennis that became her trademark between 2022 and 2024. Bar one set against world No. 2 Iga Świątek and one against Pegula, she eased to victory in every match at the Tour Finals, serving her opponents off the court and lancing groundstrokes through the quick, high-altitude conditions.

Her renewed ascent, alongside that of Amanda Anisimova, promises an intriguing 2026, as Świątek looks to recover the counterpunching brilliance that made her the best in the world through that stretch. The rivalries at the top of women’s tennis are developing new clashes of style, and Rybakina was the most stylish of them all the past week.

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