{"id":323542,"date":"2025-12-03T22:13:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-03T22:13:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/323542\/"},"modified":"2025-12-03T22:13:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-03T22:13:09","slug":"why-iga-swiatek-should-beat-aryna-sabalenka-to-best-player-prize","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/323542\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Iga Swiatek should beat Aryna Sabalenka to best player prize"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former American ATP stars Sam Querrey and Steve Johnson have debated whether Aryna Sabalenka was the best player of the 2025 WTA Tour season.<\/p>\n

Sabalenka<\/a> finished the campaign as the WTA world No 1 on 10,870 points \u2014 2,475 points clear of her rival Iga Swiatek<\/a>, who is ranked second.<\/p>\n

The Belarusian spent the entire year on top of the WTA<\/a> Rankings, and she has been world No 1 for 58 consecutive weeks since overtaking Swiatek in October 2024.<\/p>\n

How do Aryna Sabalenka and Iga Swiatek\u2019s 2025 seasons compare?<\/p>\n

Sabalenka and Swiatek each claimed one Grand Slam title in 2025, with the former securing her second US Open crown and the latter winning her maiden Wimbledon title.<\/p>\n

By most other significant statistical metrics, though, Sabalenka had the stronger season. The Belarusian won won more titles, reached more finals, had a better win percentage, had a better overall Grand Slam record, and had a much better record against top 10 opposition.<\/p>\n

Sabalenka also defeated Swiatek 7-6(1), 4-6, 6-0 in the French Open semi-finals in the pair\u2019s only meeting in 2025.<\/p>\n

Aryna Sabalenka vs Iga Swiatek in 2025 by the numbers<\/p>\n

Year-end ranking \u2013 Sabalenka \u2013 1, Swiatek \u2013 2
\nTitles: Sabalenka \u2013 4, Swiatek \u2013 3
\nFinals: Sabalenka \u2013 9, Swiatek \u2013 4
\nOverall win rate: Sabalenka \u2013 84% (63-12), Swiatek \u2013 79% (64-17)
\nGrand Slam win rate: Sabalenka \u2013 88.5% (23-3), Swiatek \u2013 87.5% (21-3)
\nWin rate vs top 10 players: Sabalenka \u2013 75% (15-5), Swiatek \u2013 52.9% (9-8)
\nHead-to-head: Sabalenka 1-0 Swiatek<\/p>\n

Tennis News<\/p>\n

What are Iga Swiatek\u2019s ranking and Grand Slam targets for 2026? Her coach reveals<\/a><\/p>\n

10 most lucrative WTA Tour prize money seasons: Aryna Sabalenka, Iga Swiatek, Serena Williams star<\/a><\/p>\n

What did Sam Querrey and Steve Johnson say about the WTA player of 2025?<\/p>\n

On an episode of the Nothing Major podcast, Johnson named Sabalenka as the player of the year as he highlighted her consistency.<\/p>\n

\u201cSabalenka. She was wire to wire, she was number one in the world,\u201d said Johnson, a former world No 21.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe missed out on a couple of finals, but she was the talk of every tournament, right?\u00a0Finals of Australia, finals of the French, semis of Wimbledon, won the US Open, finals of the year-end.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo for her to be number one the entire year\u2026 wish she probably could have had a couple of other big titles, but still an amazing year to be dominating the women\u2019s game.\u201d<\/p>\n

Querrey made a case for Swiatek as he assessed that the Polish star \u201cchanged the narrative\u201d around her game.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me, give me Iga Swiatek,\u201d said Querrey, a former world No 11.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll we talked about for the last five years: she\u2019s dominated on clay, she kind of sucks on the grass, she\u2019ll never make a run at Wimbledon, she hadn\u2019t really\u2026 and she won Wimbledon this year and completely changed that narrative.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd she backed it up and she wins Cincy (Cincinnati) too, which is historically somewhat of a fast hard court.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I feel like now she\u2019s really got, like, when you talk about her game, she can win on any surface, and that started this year after winning Wimbledon.\u201d<\/p>\n

READ NEXT: 2025 WTA Tour Awards \u2013 ft. Aryna Sabalenka, Madison Keys, Victoria Mboko, Alex Eala<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former American ATP stars Sam Querrey and Steve Johnson have debated whether Aryna Sabalenka was the best player…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":323543,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-323542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=323542"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323542\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/323543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=323542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=323542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=323542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}