Who are the Top 8 women competing at the 2025 WTA Finals?

“Wide open.” “Chaotic.” “Anything can happen.”

Once upon a time, early in this decade, these phrases made the rounds before every significant WTA event. And not without some reason. When Serena Williams descended from her throne in the late 2010s, no one was able to step up and fill it for long.

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Naomi Osaka leapt into, and back out of, the spotlight. Ashleigh Barty abdicated. Paula Badosa, Anett Kontaveit, Maria Sakkari, and Barbora Krejcikova rose into the Top 3, and fell out of it in a hurry. Was a dominant No. 1 even possible in an age of greater depth? Was Serena’s act just too hard to follow? Finally, in 2022, Iga Swiatek grabbed the No. 1 ranking and didn’t let go. Soon after, Aryna Sabalenka joined her in a ruling duopoly.

Today, looking at the qualifiers for the 2025 WTA Finals in Riyadh, we can see that the rest of the Top 8 has settled down and fallen in line behind them. For the third straight year, Sabalenka, Swiatek, Coco Gauff, and Jessica Pegula, are in the field. For the second straight year, they’ll be joined by Jasmine Paolini. Madison Keys, who qualified at No. 7, has been here before, and is hardly a flash in the pan. The only genuine surprise is Amanda Anisimova at No. 4. Even in her case, though, the talent has always been obvious.

Consistency. Reliability. Resilience. They may not be rousing words, or qualify as clickbait, but they may be the under-the-radar story of the year on the women’s side. Many of the Top 8 have demonstrated one of those qualities at some point in 2025.

Aryna Sabalenka

She endured three agonizing late-major defeats: To Keys, 7-5 in the third, in the Melbourne final. To Gauff, 6-4 in the third, in a wind-damaged Roland Garros final. And to Anisimova, again 6-4 in the third, in the Wimbledon semis. That would be enough to send most players into a prolonged funk. Instead, Sabalenka came right back to win the US Open. She can lose her mind during big matches, and react badly afterward. But she also puts them behind her quickly. Sabalenka has enough belief in her game to know that there will be many more major finals ahead.

Iga Swiatek

It may be hard to remember now, but everything was unraveling for Iga as of June. Over the previous two months, she had lost her entire clay empire, from Stuttgart to Madrid to Rome to Paris. Rather than demoralizing her, the defeats freed her too play more relaxed and aggressive tennis on grass. A month later, she had won Wimbledon, an event she had never contended for before, and hardly dreamed of conquering.

Coco Gauff

Over the summer, Coco said that she no longer puts pressure on herself to stay in top form for the entire year—the schedule is just too long for any mortal to dominate from start to finish. That attitude helped her dig herself out of a couple of deep holes in 2025.

From Australia to Indian Wells, she didn’t make a semifinal. Then she made three huge finals in a row, in Madrid, Rome, and Paris, and won her second Slam, at Roland Garros. In the second half of the year, she repeated the same pattern, going out early at the U.S. hard-court events, struggling to get her serve into the court, and finally firing her coach. Then, she turned around and won a 1000 in Wuhan. Now she’ll try to defend her title in Riyadh.

Jasmine Paolini

If there was anyone who seemed ripe for a fall to earth in 2025, it was Paolini. The previous year, she had come from close-to-nowhere, at age 28, to make the finals at Roland Garros and Wimbledon. This year, the magic wasn’t there at first, as she failed to make a semi for the first three months. But she found the spark in a three-set win over Naomi Osaka in Miami, and went on to have the week of her life in Rome, where she brought the title back to Italy, and gave tennis fans the party of the year.

Amanda Anisimova

The American had the season’s biggest bounce-back of all. In the Wimbledon final, she was leveled, 6-0, 6-0, by Iga Swiatek, in front of the world. But after turning her post-match speech into a mini-therapy session, she came back to beat Swiatek and make another Slam final in New York. Now she has a chance to become the top-ranked American. More important, she finally seems to have the self-belief to match her shot-making. In a way, her double-bagel loss made her a star, and may make her a champ.

Jessica Pegula

By now, Pegula must subscribe to Gauff’s “I’m not going to be at my best all year” theory of pressure-reduction. If anything, her 2025 was even more topsy-turvy than her countrywoman’s. The 31-year-old started slowly, before suddenly winning titles in Austin and Charleston, and making the Miami final. Then she slowed back down during clay season, won a title out of the blue in Bad Homburg, and went back into a slump for two months. Finally, she finished the year on a high note, making the semis in New York and Beijing, and the final in Wuhan.

All of these women had downturns and defeats that might have sapped their confidence and effectively ended their seasons. We’ve seen it before this decade, when top-ranked players like Badosa, Sakkari, and Kontaveit, Ons Jabeur, and Emma Raducanu stumbled and didn’t recover. But this group has weathered their storms and kept believing in their abilities, and the game is better for it.

“Anything can happen” is still true in women’s tennis. These days, what happens most of the time is that the best players find their way back to the top.