WTA Match of the Year, No. 4: Jessica Pegula ends Aryna Sabalenka's 20-0 Wuhan reign

This week, Steve Tignor will reveal his WTA Matches of the Year, and the TENNIS.com editors will reveal our WTA Players of the Year. Check out our ATP Matches of the Year and ATP Players of the Year.

There are a couple of odd phenomena at the top of the women’s game these days, and this late-season thriller exemplified both.

The first is Aryna Sabalenka. She’s a deserving No. 1 player who went 63-12 this year. But she’s also the rare No. 1 who struggles to win the big matches. That was truer than ever in 2025, a season in which she fell short, each time in three sets, to Madison Keys in the Australian Open final, Mirra Andreeva in the Indian Wells final, Coco Gauff in the Roland Garros final, and Amanda Anisimova in the Wimbledon semis. Her loss to Jessica Pegula in the Wuhan semis wasn’t on quite as big a stage. But considering that she led 5-2 in the third, it was equally brutal.

The second odd WTA phenomenon right now has to do with the tour’s rivalries. The 2020s should be defined by the back-and-forth between Sabalenka and Iga Swiatek, who have been No. 1 and 2 for the last three years. The problem is that they hardly ever play anymore. They’ve never faced each other in a Grand Slam final, and they met just once in 2025.

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Fortunately, other top women have picked up the slack and made the most of their showdowns with Sabalenka. Gauff is 6-6 against her, and has a knack for driving her around the bend. Anisimova played Sabalenka tough in four high-profile meetings in 2025. Rybakina went 2-2 against her. But Sabalenka and Pegula, who played three three-setters in September and October, may have been the best matchup of all.

The first of those three meetings came in the US Open semifinals, and the last happened at the WTA Finals in Riyadh. But Wuhan was the wildest ride of the three.

It started, as matches between these two tend to do, with Sabalenka coming out swinging and beating Pegula with raw pace and aggression. This time she was more dominant than usual. She won the first set 6-2, broke at love to make it 2-2 in the second, and threatened Pegula’s serve at 2-3. Then she hit a speed bump. Sabalenka twice had a good look at a forehand return on a second serve. Twice she drilled the ball into the net and failed to break.

Now it was Pegula’s turn to do what she tends to do against Sabalenka: Find a way to up her aggression level and take the initiative away from the world No. 1. At 3-3, clocked a clean backhand return winner and rifled a forehand return to break serve. Now we had a match.

I feel like she’s always been able to raise her level against me when I felt like it’s been close. So I’m glad that today it kind of flipped. Jessica Pegula

The third set was a combination of the first two. Sabalenka regained her edge early, and looked to be in total control by the seventh game, when she hit two forehand winners and an ace to lead 5-2. Then Pegula turned around and matched her by hitting three straight aces to make it 3-5. That momentum carried over into the next game, when she broke for 4-5.

From there, the play from both women rose to a higher level.

The rallies grew longer and the already-noisy Chinese crowd grew louder. Pegula unveiled a brilliant defensive backhand slice, and fired an equally good backhand return crosscourt. Sabalenka tried and failed on a tweener, to the fans’ delight. At 5-5, Pegula went up 0-40, but Sabalenka saved all three break points. Pegula finally broke on a long, scream-inducing, back-and-forth rally, and Sabalenka chucked her racquet.

Pegula had her first lead of the match. Which meant it was her turn to blink. Serving at 6-5, she reached match point twice and saved three break points, two of them with winners. But she also double faulted four times—she hadn’t hit one until that game—and was broken.

The match got its deciding tiebreaker, but maybe not the one it deserved. Pegula jumped ahead with an ace, a strong return, a deftly deceptive drop shot, and a great defensive get. When she closed it out 7-2, she celebrated with a broad smile and a clenched fist—major signs of excitement for this most placid of top players.

The win snapped a 20-match win streak for Sabalenka in Wuhan, and made their head-to-head a little less one-sided. Pegula is 3-9 against Sabalenka now.

“I feel like she’s always been able to raise her level against me when I felt like it’s been close. So I’m glad that today it kind of flipped,” Pegula said. “I think I was able to raise my level in times when I really needed it.”

Sabalenka raises her game in one set. Pegula raises it the next. The result usually comes down to a couple of points. That sounds like a rivalry worth looking forward to again in 2026.