In tennis, the year has passed, and now everyone is preparing for the next season. The rest for the best players is very short, one of the shortest in world professional sports. The first official tournaments start already in the last week of 2025, and from the New Year the carousel will start spinning for real. This time about what are the trends in modern tennis and how Latvian tennis players have fared, also about what is expected in 2026, and who could be among the elite in the coming years.
IN BRIEF:
Alyona Ostapenko finished the calendar year ranked 23rd in the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) singles rankings and seventh in doubles. The highest peak of the career – as a victory in the “Grand Slam” tournament at the “French Open” in 2017 and then the fifth place in the world ranking the following year – remained unachieved. In the “Grand Slam” tournaments in 2025, the highest achievement is the third round in Paris, but in Australia and Wimbledon losses in the first matches. The worst indicator since 2021. Earned $2.328 million in prizes, there is a victory in the big tournament in Stuttgart (in the final against Arina Sabalenka) and a Porsche car prize, which was exchanged for a sportier model with a voucher and received late in the fall. 18 wins and 20 losses in singles, not too many matches, 40 wins and 16 losses in doubles, two titles in Charleston and Abu Dhabi, two grand finals in Wimbledon and Australia.
Latvia’s currently second best tennis player, Darja Semenistaja, finally broke into the TOP 100 world ranking for the first time in her career, reaching a career record – 87th position in October. At the end of the year, Semenistaja is in the 101st place, but this also guarantees her participation in the “Grand Slam” main tournament “Australian Open” without playing in the qualification for the first time. Application or entry ranking it’s six weeks before the tournament starts and nothing can change there. Playing in the qualification is hard and tiring, also psychologically difficult, and only this year, playing in the US Open, Daria managed to overcome the qualification for the first time. During the season, Semenistaja played a lot, and one can only admire her for her initiative, physical and psychological endurance. Semenistaja played in 32 tournaments in the year, only seven of the top 100 players played in 30 tournaments or more (the record is 33 tournaments held by Hungarian Pana Udvardija and Kamila Rahimova from Uzbekistan).
Is it good or bad? Everyone does according to their abilities, the 18 most valuable tournaments in the last 52 weeks are ranked in terms of points. By playing a lot, you can ensure that if you lose in several tournaments already in the first round, you have something to take points from, because there are a lot of tournaments.
The best female tennis players in the world play an average of 18-23 tournaments a year, no more, but they are of the highest caliber.
Therefore, Semenista has no time to prepare for any tournament in particular – the exception will be the first “Australian Open” of the year, and it will be difficult to endure it in the long term. The athlete is physically in good condition, she moves well on the court, is left-handed, but does she have something in her arsenal that can win major tournaments? Unfortunately, for now – no, and this is not the opinion of a couch expert, the competition in tennis is very high.
Anastasija Sevastova played in 14 tournaments in her regular comeback year on the tour and reached 188th place. The protected rating due after childbirth or injury is over. In major tournaments, Sevastova has to play in the qualification or hope for a special invitation, which was not given to her by the tournament organizers in Australia, and now, after a nine-year break, she will have to play in the qualification in Melbourne. This year, Sevastova reached the quarter-finals in Rabat, played in the third round in Madrid, and beat Alena Ostapenko in the second round, reached the round of 16 in Montreal, defeating Jessica Pegula in the third round, but in most tournaments she lost early on.
Sevastova is not playing worse than before, but the misfortune is that the opponents are progressing and tennis on the women’s tour is becoming more and more physical.
Nastya does not have the physical strength and speed, as well as the serve, to face such opponents, although she plays smartly and knows how to change the rhythm of the serves.
17-year-old Adelina Lačinova, who is in the sixth top 100 in the world ranking, and Beatrice Zeltiņa, a year older, who is in the seventh top 100 in the WTA ranking, are still very promising for Latvia. In total, Latvia has eight players in the world’s TOP1000, which is a relatively large number for such a small country.
For men, the situation is much sadder, our leader of the last years, Robert Strombach, was always in the fourth hundred of the ranking, but at the end of the year he has already slipped to the fifth hundred. In general, only four of ours have rating points – only Kārlis Ozoliņš is still in the first thousand, but he also slipped to 961st position during the Christmas week, Artūrs Žagars and Mārtiņš Rocēns also have one professional point.
In tennis, especially for men, the competition is simply cruel, requires a huge amount of work and investment, as well as health and luck.
There are still hundreds of players around the world who are quite strong, but do not try to break into the professional ranking, because they are aware that they will not get higher than the second, third hundred, and there is no money for it either.
These tennis players stay to play in club tournaments and earn money by playing there, as well as training and sparring. Few succeed like Monaco’s Valentin Vaschero, who also earned the ATP Breakthrough of the Year Award – from the 181st position in qualifying, he won nine matches in a row to win the Shanghai Masters title. In the ranking at the end of the year, Vašero is already in the 31st position, and now in the number of posted players. It is an unbelievable story, but let’s take into account that the athlete is from Monaco and his opportunities to train and drive around are much greater than the absolute majority of our athletes.
Everyone sees only the upper part of the iceberg, and two outstanding talents – the Spaniard Carlos Alcaraz and the Italian Yannick Sinner – have been basking there for two seasons in a row. Alcaraz has 71 wins and nine losses this year, Sinner has 58 wins and six losses (four of them against Alcaraz). Both have earned nearly 20 million USD in prizes in official tournaments this year – Sinner 19.11 million, Alkaras 18.8 million, plus more sample matches at the end of the year and Sinner an additional six million for winning the “Six Kings” tournament in Saudi Arabia. Understandably, both earn even more in advertising because they are professional sports megastars, charismatic personalities, and are worth every penny to sponsors.
The two best ones are truly unique in their performance, attitude towards others and towards each other. No one else has managed to win a Grand Slam tournament for two seasons.
In 2025, Sinner’s triumph in Australia and Wimbledon, and Alcaraz’s “French Open” (from three match points in the final) and “US Open”. Sinner was the first for a long time, at the end of the year, Alcaras regained the leader’s honor in the ranking, even though Sinner triumphed again in the annual final tournament of the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP). The Italian was disqualified from playing fewer tournaments in the spring due to an unclear doping violation.
The superiority of the two over the others is huge and can be well characterized by rating points. The third best in the world ranking, Alexander Zverev, from Germany to Alcaraz and Sinner, is much further in terms of points than the holders of the last places before him (in professional tennis, one rating point at the end of the year is 2223 players). Tennis fans around the world voted Sinner as their favorite for the third year in a row. For the second year in a row, Alcaraz has once again received the Stefan Edberg Award for Sportsmanship and Gentlemanship on Tour, previously held by the legendary Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal.
Will anyone be able to break the Sinner/Alcaraz duel in 2026? In some individual tournament, everything is possible, but in general, the chances are not great.
Unexpectedly, at the end of the year, Alcaras stopped working with his long-time coach, Juan Carlos Ferrero. Sinner’s team, on the other hand, will soon not have the famous Australian Darren Cahill, who has decided to focus more on the career of a tennis expert.
Among the youngsters, the most promising seems to be the Brazilian João Fonseca, who reached the 24th position in the ATP ranking at the age of 19, and Lernier Tien, an American of Vietnamese origin who is less than a year older (29th place in the ranking). Fonseca is really extraordinary and talented, but the question is whether his physical preparation and endurance will be enough to be in the elite. Tien, on the other hand, has enormous work capacity, and the handwriting of American coach Michael Chang can be felt here. At the end of December, he became the winner of the “Next Gen” or the biggest young talent final tournament.
In general, the Canadian Félix Ogier-Aliasim (already fifth in the ranking), as well as the American Ben Shelton (9th) and the British Jack Draper (10th), who was knocked out of the competition in the second half of the season by a long-term injury, were a little closer to the best of all the others.
For women, everything changes or every major tournament. Since 2017, only twice has a tennis player managed to triumph in two major tournaments in one season – in 2022 for Iga Svyontek and in 2024 for Arina Sabalenka. In other years, every “Grand Slam” has a different champion. yes
Sabalenka has been the leader in the ranking for quite some time, but she is also not so stable and won only one Grand Slam tournament in 2025, the US Open.
Polish Iga Sviontek, Americans Koko Goff and Amanda Anisimova, Yelena Rybakina from Kazakhstan are again close to the top, Japanese Naomi Osaka is again approaching the elite. Among the young, the most promising is Mira Andreeva, who at the age of 18 is already ninth in the ranking, as well as Czech Linda Noskova (13th position at the age of 21), Canadian Victoria Mboko (19 years old and 18th position in the ranking), Australian Maia Joynta (19 years old), American Iva Jovich and Czech Tereza Valentova, who are a year younger than her, also interesting and unique Filipina Aleksandra Yala, who graduated from the Nadal Academy.
Let’s see how it will be. The first tournaments immediately, including the “United Cup” for mixed teams in Australia, where the 18 best national teams participate. In many games, really elite tennis players – USA Taylor Fritz and Coco Goff, Italy Flavio Coboli and Jasmine Paolini, Canada Felix Ogier-Aliasim and Viktoria Mboko, Poland Hubert Hurkacz and Iga Sviontek, as well as others. The United Cup also awards ranking points, with a total prize pool of $11.170 million and therefore a strong field of participants.
