Elena Rybakina claimed the biggest payday in women’s tennis history by beating world number one Aryna Sabalenka in straight sets in the WTA Finals.<\/p>\n
The 26-year-old produced a stunning display to overcome four-time Grand Slam winner Sabalenka 6-3 7-6 (7-0) in Saudi Arabia. <\/p>\n
Because both players came through the tournament undefeated, the prize money on offer was a record-breaking \u00a33.98m – the largest payout offering in women’s tennis history. <\/p>\n
The prize money tops the \u00a33.74m Sabalenka, 27, earned for winning September’s US Open, which was the highest-paying Grand Slam in 2025. <\/p>\n
“It’s been an incredible week,” said Rybakina, of Kazakhstan.<\/p>\n
“I honestly didn’t expect any result so to go so far was just incredible. <\/p>\n
“I want to say congratulations to Aryna for being number one for a second year in a row, it’s an incredible achievement.” <\/p>\n
Rybakina, who was the world number six, hit 16 winners during a dominant first-set display. <\/p>\n
The 2022 Wimbledon winner saved two break points before winning all four points in the sixth game to go a break up and held her serve to seal the first set. <\/p>\n
With the second set on serve, Sabalenka saved two break points at 4-4 to swing the momentum in her favour. <\/p>\n
But, having worked so hard to upset Rybakina’s rhythm, Sabalenka let her opponent off the hook by squandering two set points in the next game to level the second set at 5-5. <\/p>\n
Sabalenka’s failure to level the match affected her tie-break performance, with Rybakina winning all seven points to take home the title.<\/p>\n
The victory, Rybakina’s sixth over Sabalenka, means the she will move up one spot in the rankings to fifth in the world. <\/p>\n
A distraught Sabalenka appeared to be in tears as she sat with her coaching team shortly after the match. <\/p>\n
“It was not the best performance from me today but Elena you were definitely the better player,” Sabalenka, of Belarus, told the crowd.<\/p>\n
“You literally smashed me out of the court. I’m happy to see you play your best tennis. Enjoy this beautiful trophy.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Elena Rybakina claimed the biggest payday in women’s tennis history by beating world number one Aryna Sabalenka in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":279985,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":["post-279984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=279984"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279984\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/279985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}