Background and career
Aryna Siarhiejeŭna Sabalenka (born 5 May 1998) is a Belarusian professional tennis player. She has been ranked the world No. 1 in women's singles by the Women's Tennis Association (WTA) for a total of 107 weeks (tenth-most of all time), and finished as the year-end No. 1 twice (2024, 2025). Sabalenka has won 24 career singles titles, including four majors (two titles at the Australian Open and two at the US Open), as well as eleven WTA 1000 events. She is also a former world No. 1 in women's doubles and has won six doubles titles, including the 2019 US Open and 2021 Australian Open, both with Elise Mertens. Sabalenka came to prominence in 2017 when she and Aliaksandra Sasnovich led the Belarus Fed Cup team to a runner-up finish despite both being ranked outside the top 75 at the time. She finished 2018 and 2019 ranked world No. 11 in singles. Following two major singles semifinal appearances in 2021, Sabalenka rose to world No. 2 but struggled to maintain that success in 2022 consistently. In 2023, she won her first major singles title at the Australian Open, finished runner-up at the US Open, and obtained the world No. 1 ranking for the first time. In 2024, Sabalenka defended her Australian Open title and won a third major singles title at the US Open, finishing as the year-end No. 1 for the first time. In 2025, she defended her title at the US Open and was runner-up at the Australian and French Opens, holding the No. 1 position for the entire season. In 2026, she reached two major singles finals (Australian Open and US Open) and completed the Sunshine Double (winning Indian Wells and Miami back-to-back). Also in 2026, Sabalenka won the Laureus World Sports Award for Sportswoman of the Year.
Sabalenka began playing doubles regularly in 2019. With Mertens as her partner, she found instant success by winning the Sunshine Double (Indian Wells and Miami) that same year. They won the US Open later in the season, and Sabalenka qualified for the WTA Finals for the first time. After she and Mertens won their second major title at the Australian Open in 2021, Sabalenka became the doubles world No. 1, after which she shifted to playing exclusively singles.
Sabalenka was born in Minsk, the capital of Belarus. Her father, Sergey (died 2019), was an ice hockey player. Sabalenka started playing tennis by chance. She said, "One day, my dad was just driving me somewhere in the car, and he saw tennis courts on the way. So he took me to the courts. I liked it and enjoyed it, and that's how it was. That's how it started." She began training at the National Tennis Academy in Minsk when it opened in 2014. In 2015, the Belarusian Tennis Federation persuaded Sabalenka and her team to focus on playing low-level professional events instead of junior tournaments, even though she was still eligible to compete at the junior level.
Sabalenka had a late start on the ITF Junior Circuit, instead competing on the U14 and U16 Tennis Europe tours at a younger age. She did not compete in the main draw of any ITF events until 2013 at the low-level Grade-4 Tallink Cup in Estonia at the age of 15. She never played in the junior Grand Slam tournaments or any other high-level Grade-A and Grade-1 events. Without the higher point levels from these bigger tournaments, she had a career-high ranking of just No. 225. Sabalenka won her first ITF title in doubles at the lowest-level Grade-5 Alatan Tour Cup in Belarus in late 2013 with compatriot Vera Lapko as her partner. In 2014, she excelled at Grade 4 events. She reached her first singles final at the Estonian Junior Open in June and won her first singles title at the MTV Total Junior Cup in Finland in October. At the end of the season, Sabalenka defended her Alatan Tour Cup doubles title, this time with compatriot Nika Shytkouskaya, and also won the singles title. She only played in one tournament in 2015, the European Junior Championships. As a Grade B1 event, this was the highest-level junior tournament she played in. She lost in the second round to top seed Markéta Vondroušová.
Sabalenka began playing on the ITF Women's Circuit in 2012, even before she competed on the ITF Junior Circuit. Her first five tournaments were in her hometown of Minsk and spread out over two years, but she did not win a main draw match in any of them. She won her first professional match at the very end of 2014 in Istanbul. The following season in October, she won her first two titles in back-to-back weeks in Antalya, both at the $10k level. Sabalenka also won a $25k title the last week of the year. This title put her into the top 300 WTA rankings for the first time at the start of 2016. That year, she made her Fed Cup debut in April, losing her only match. She also won her two biggest titles to date at the $50k level. The first in Tianjin put her into the top 200 in May and the second in Toyota in November helped her finish the year ranked at No. 137 in the world.
Despite some early season success in the Fed Cup, Sabalenka had a quiet start to the year. She played in her first WTA Tour main draw in February as a qualifier at the Dubai Open; however, she did not win her first WTA Tour match until Wimbledon in July. In her Grand Slam debut, she again reached the main draw through qualifying and defeated Irina Khromacheva in the opening round. Sabalenka followed up this achievement with another win at the Washington Open over No. 34 Lauren Davis, the 2016 runner-up and the highest-ranked player she had defeated at the time. After losing in qualifying at the US Open, Sabalenka reached her first ever WTA semifinal at the Tashkent Open, defeating third seed and world No. 53, Tatjana Maria, along the way. A few weeks later, she entered the Tianjin Open as the 119th-ranked player in the world, but managed to reach her first WTA tournament final. There, she faced her childhood idol Maria Sharapova, but ultimately lost in two tight sets. With this performance, she rose to No. 76 in the rankings, entering the top 100 for the first time. After losing a tight Fed Cup final to the United States, Sabalenka finished the season by winning the biggest title of her career at the time at the Mumbai Open, a WTA 125 event. The title cemented her at No. 78 at the end of the year.
