Aryna Sabalenka is gearing up for the WTA Finals and achieved an impressive milestone without even hitting a ball.
The World No. 1 has continued to impress in 2025, with Sabalenka’s peak coming with her US Open victory.
Sabalenka has held onto the World No. 1 spot for the entire year, and she heads into the WTA Finals looking to capture her very first year-end trophy.
Ahead of the Saudi Arabia tournament, Sabalenka has hit a milestone that was last achieved by Steffi Graf in 1996.
Aryna Sabalenka’s WTA Finals achievement
Sabalenka heads into the WTA Finals as World No.1 for the third consecutive year, which is an achievement that hasn’t happened in this century.
The last player to achieve the feat was Steffi Graf, who played the year-end tournament as World No. 1 in 1994, 1995, and 1996.
The German icon won the tournament in two of those years, in 1995 and 1996, to capture her fourth and fifth WTA Finals trophies.
Sabalenka, meanwhile, has reached the semi-finals of the tournament in the last two years, suffering losses to eventual winners Iga Swiatek in 2023 and Coco Gauff in 2024.
The Belarusian’s best performance at the WTA Finals came in 2022, when Sabalenka lost in the final to Caroline Garcia.
Aryna Sabalenka has been handed a tough WTA Finals draw
Sabalenka will have to perform at a high level if she wants to win her maiden WTA Finals crown in Saudi Arabia as she’s been handed a tough group.
While no matches will be easy against the top eight players in the world, Sabalenka will have to play Gauff, Jessica Pegula, and Jasmine Paolini in the Steffi Graf group.
Gauff is coming off the back of a very impressive Asian swing, where she won the Wuhan Open, while Pegula has enjoyed her best season to date.
Paolini, who squeezed into the tournament as the eighth seed, has also beaten Sabalenka on two previous occasions.
