Happy birthday, Aryna! 28 stats for Sabalenka’s 28th birthday

Aryna Sabalenka turns 28 years young today, and to celebrate, here’s a stat for each one of her birthdays so far:

1 is for the No. 1 ranking, which she’ll hold for an 89th and 90th career week during Rome over the next two weeks.

2 is for her two year-end No. 1 finishes, in 2024 and 2025. She’s one of only 13 players to finish No. 1 in back-to-back years in WTA rankings history, which dates back to 1975.

3 is for being one of only three women this century to hold No. 1 for every single week of a calendar year, alongside Serena Williams and Ashleigh Barty. Serena did it in 2014 and 2015, Barty did it in 2020 and 2021 and Sabalenka just did it in 2025.

4 is for her four career Grand Slam titles, all of them coming on hard courts and split evenly between the Australian Open (2023 and 2024) and the US Open (2024 and 2025).

5 is for five straight Top 5 finishes, in 2021 (No. 2), 2022 (No. 5), 2023 (No. 2), 2024 (No. 1) and 2025 (No. 1). She’s the only woman to finish the last five years in a row in the Top 5.

6 is for six straight Top 10 finishes, if you tack on her No. 10 finish from 2020. She’s also the only woman to finish the last six years in a row in the Top 10 of the WTA rankings.

7 is for reaching the last seven hard-court major finals in a row, a run that dates back to the 2023 Australian Open. The last woman before her to reach seven straight finals at hard-court majors was Martina Hingis, between 1997 and 2000.

8 is for winning her first eight Grand Slam quarterfinal matches in a row, just the second woman in the Open Era to do that after Chris Evert, who won her first 48—yes, 48—in a row.

9 is for reaching nine finals in 2025, which was the most on the women’s tour last year. She won a tour-leading four titles, too.

10 is for owning the 10th-longest streak at No. 1 in WTA rankings history, which she just secured this week with her 81st consecutive week at the top spot. More on that here.

11 is for owning the 11th-most career weeks at No. 1 in WTA rankings history, with this week being her 89th overall. It’s also for her 11 WTA 1000 titles, including two already this year.

12 is for 12,000 ranking points, which she surpassed for the first time in her career last summer when she reached a career-best 12,420 after Wimbledon. She was the first woman to cross that threshold in a decade, since Serena in 2015.

13 is for reaching the quarterfinals or better at the last 13 majors she’s played, a run that started at the 2022 US Open. Even scarier? She’s made the semifinals or better at 12 of those.

14 is for reaching 14 career Grand Slam semifinals. She’s won seven of her last eight Grand Slam semifinal matches, too.

15 is for earning more than $15 million in prize money in 2025 alone. She earned $15,008,519, shattering the record for highest single-season prize money total in WTA history, which was previously held by Serena with $12,385,572 in 2013.

16 is for the curse of the 16-match winning streak. She’s had three 15-match winning streaks in her career—one between 2020 and 2021, one in 2024 and one this year—but it’s been snapped right before 16 every time, most recently last week, where she had six match points to finally break the curse…

17 is for reaching the quarterfinals or better at her last 17 tournaments in a row, a run that dates back to last February.

18 is for winning 18 sets in a row at the US Open at one point, between her third round match in 2024 and the semifinals in 2025. The sets she lost in those two matches—to Ekaterina Alexandrova and Jessica Pegula, respectively—were the only two sets she lost en route to back-to-back titles in New York.

19 is for winning 19 tie-breaks in a row during the 2025 season, which was the record for most tie-breaks won in a row by a woman in the Open Era. The previous record was 14.

20 is for winning her last 20 tie-breaks in a row at Grand Slams, which isn’t just the most tie-breaks won in a row by a woman at Grand Slams in the Open Era, it’s the most tie-breaks won in a row by ANY player—woman OR man—at Grand Slams in the Open Era, surpassing Novak Djokovic's 19.

21 is for her last straight-set defeat at a major coming a ridiculous 21 majors ago. To find her last straight-set loss at a major you have to go all the way back to the 2020 US Open, where she lost to Victoria Azarenka second round, 6-1, 6-3.

22 is for her 22-3 overall record in tie-breaks last year, which was the most tie-breaks won by a woman in a single season in the Open Era. We call her Aryna Tie-breakalenka for a reason!

23 is for her age when she first broke into the Top 5, after winning her first Madrid title in 2021—and she did it in style, too, beating Barty, who was No. 1 at the time, in the final.

24 is for her 24 career titles, which includes 21 on her favorite surface, hard courts. The other three have all come on the clay of Madrid, all in the last three odd years in 2021, 2023 and 2025.

25 is for her age when she first reached No. 1, following her run to the US Open final in 2023. It’s also for the incredible 25 sets she won in a row at the Australian Open from 2023 to 2025.

26 is for her 26-2 record this year, and both of the losses were almost wins—she led Elena Rybakina 3-0 in the third set of the Australian Open final and had six match points against Hailey Baptiste in the quarterfinals of Madrid, but lost both matches.

27 is for age 27, and spending that entire year of her life ranked No. 1 in the world. That’s all 365 days from May 5th, 2025 to May 4th, 2026. Will she do it at age 28 too?

And finally, 28 is for being one of only two women in the last 28 years to win both hard-court majors in the same year, having won both the Australian Open and US Open in 2024. Angelique Kerber is the only other woman to do that in that span, in 2016. Before that, you have to go all the way back to Hingis in 1997.