Elena Rybakina finishes 2025 resurgence by beating world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka to win WTA Finals

Elena Rybakina's rollercoaster season is ending with her flying high.

The 2022 Wimbledon champion won the season-ending WTA Finals title with a 6-3, 7-6(0) win over world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka on Saturday, putting a bow on a late-season surge that valuted her back into the conversation amongst the game's best players.

The Kazakh ends the year on an 11-match winning streak, and back in the Top 5 of the WTA rankings.

By going undefeated in Riyadh, she also pockets a record $5.235 million in prize money, which the WTA said was a record payout for women's sports.

The first player in nine years to strike more than 500 aces for the WTA season, Rybakina's serve once again saved her when it counted against Sabalenka. She saved all five break points she faced, hit 13 aces, and erased two set points in the 10th game of the second set.

She made the only break of the match count in the first set, moving ahead 4-2 when Sabalenka netted an overhead. In set two, she had four opportunities to push further ahead—two break points at 1-1 and two more at 4-4—but missed three returns. Sabalenka hit an ace on the fourth, and looked as though she was ready to turn things around with a boomerang break.

From 4-5, 15-40, it was Rybakina's turn to escape, and she rode that momentum through to seven straight points in the tiebreaker, handing Sabalenka just her third tiebreak loss in 25 played this year.

Rybakina’s victory ended a season that also included titles in Strasbourg and Ningbo, and made her the 10th consecutive first-time WTA Finals champion. She finished with a 58-19 match record, with 14 of her wins coming after the US Open.

She is the fourth player in the past seven years to win the year-end title as the No. 6 seed, following Caroline Wozniacki, Elina Svitolina and Garbiñe Muguruza.