2025 WTA Awards: NBO Power Rankings Panel’s…

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The end of a season can only mean one thing: awards time! The WTA has been handing out their end-of-year awards over the last few days, celebrating the best accomplishments from a wild 2025 season.

But, in the opinion of the National Bank Open power rankings panel, did the WTA get it right? Here is our take on the 2025 WTA awards.

Player of the Year: Aryna Sabalenka

Record: 63-12
Titles: 4
Biggest Title: US Open
Year-End Ranking: 1

Despite a highly competitive year on the WTA Tour, it’s difficult not to name the year-end world No. 1 as our Player of the Year. Aryna Sabalenka finished the season in the top spot for a second-consecutive year, holding that place for the entirety of 2025. The 27-year-old became the seventh player in WTA history to achieve the wire-to-wire world No. 1, joining the likes of Steffi Graff and Serena Williams.

Grand Slam silverware was hard to come by at first, but Sabalenka still managed to reach the finals of the Australian Open and Roland-Garros. Then, at the US Open, she finally secured a 2025 Slam title by defeating fellow Player of the Year nominee Amanda Anisimova in straight sets in the title match.

Sprinkle in WTA 1000 titles in Miami and Madrid, plus making the final at the year-end championships in Riyadh, and Sabalenka’s season certainly reflects being the Player of the Year.

Actual WTA Award Winner: Aryna Sabalenka

Doubles Team of the Year: Sara Errani / Jasmine Paolini

Record: 34-12
Titles: 5
Biggest Title: Roland-Garros
Year-End Ranking: 3

The Italian duo of Sara Errani and Jasmine Paolini kept the good times rolling after their breakout season in 2024. Once again, the pair delighted on home soil, successfully defending their title in Rome which proved to be a harbinger of good things to come on the clay.

Stade Roland-Garros has been a favoured venue of the pair throughout their time together and they impressed in Paris once again in 2025. In three events played together on the planet’s most famous clay courts, they have reached the final every time. After finishing as the French Open runners-up in 2024 before securing the Olympic gold medal there a few months later, Errani and Paolini were once again in the final at Roland-Garros this past June and replicated their Olympic success, securing their first Grand Slam title as a team.

Errani and Paolini finished the year with four titles, adding three WTA 1000 crowns to go along with their major, and finished with almost 1000 points more than the next-closest team in the Race to Riyadh. They also guided Italy to a second consecutive Billie Jean King Cup crown.

Other Vote-Getters: Veronika Kudermetova/Elise Mertens, Katerina Siniakova/Taylor Townsend

Actual WTA Award Winner: Katerina Siniakova / Taylor Townsend

Newcomer of the Year: Victoria Mboko

Record: 60-14 (including ITF)
Titles: 7 (including ITF)
Best Result: WTA 1000 National Bank Open Champion
Year-End Ranking: 18 (+332)

Even for fans who knew who Victoria Mboko was and how much potential she had going into 2025, her results this year exceeded all expectations.

Kicking off the season on a 22-match winning streak (all in straight sets), a record for a Canadian woman, and winning five of her first six tournaments on the ITF Tour set the tone for her breakthrough season. The early months were full of firsts for Mboko, including first WTA match win in Miami, first time qualifying for a Grand Slam, first Grand Slam main draw match win, and first time reaching the third round at a major at Roland-Garros.

While she did not pick up a win over a top-ranked opponent in those early months, she showed signs of what she was capable of with three-set thrillers against world No. 11 Paula Badosa in Miami and soon-to-be Roland-Garros champion Coco Gauff in Rome.

And then there was Montreal. Entering as a wildcard, the 18-year-old defeated four Grand Slam champions to secure her first WTA Tour title, at the 1000 level no less, on home soil.

Mboko was not even done there. She added a second title in Hong Kong in her final event of the season, ending 2025 inside the Top 20 and as her nation’s No.1-ranked singles player on the WTA Tour.

Actual WTA Award Winner: Victoria Mboko

Comeback Player of the Year: Belinda Bencic

Record: 39-17
Titles: 2
Best Result: WTA 500 Abu Dhabi Champion, WTA 500 Tokyo Champion, Wimbledon semifinalist
Year-End Ranking: 11 (+470)

After stepping away from the tour for a little over a year, Belinda Bencic returned in 2025 with a new biggest fan, her newborn daughter Bella.

Bencic began the year ranked No. 487 but reentered the Top 100 only a month into the season thanks to her first title as a mom in Abu Dhabi, where she beat top-seed Elena Rybakina en route to the winner’s circle.

The Swiss then proved that mom powers do exist as she matched her best-ever Grand Slam result at Wimbledon by reaching the semifinals, taking down world No. 7 Mirra Andreeva in straight sets in the quarters. To wrap up her comeback season, Bencic won her tenth-career title in Tokyo to secure the No. 11 spot, her best finish to a year since 2019.

Actual WTA Award Winner: Belinda Bencic

Most-Improved Player of the Year: Amanda Anisimova

Record: 47-17
Titles: 2
Best Result: WTA 1000 Doha Champion, WTA 1000 Beijing Champion, Wimbledon and US Open runner-up
Year-End Ranking: 4 (+32)

In 2024, Anisimova’s lone final came at the National Bank Open in Toronto, the biggest title match of her career at that point. However, little did the tour know that they would see a lot more from the American in 2025.

Anisimova was ranked outside the Top 40 heading into Doha, but she wouldn’t be there for long thanks to her play at the year’s first WTA 1000. The 24-year-old took down five Top 30 opponents, dropping just a single set, en route to the final. There, Anisimova defeated former major champion Jelena Ostapenko in straight sets to claim her first WTA 1000 and crack the Top 20.

Later on in the year, the New Jerseyan’s best tennis was on full display throughout the second half of the season. Anisimova stunned Sabalenka at Wimbledon to reach her maiden Grand Slam final then, at the US Open, she beat Iga Swiatek and Naomi Osaka on her path to her second-straight major final.

Anisimova celebrated a career-high ranking of No. 4 with another WTA 1000 title in Beijing, finishing off an outstanding year with a trip to her first WTA Finals, where she made the semis.

Other Vote-Getters: Clara Tauson

Actual WTA Award Winner: Amanda Anisimova

Best WTA Tour Moment of 2025:

Pete, Mel, Sarah-Jade, Jonathan, Eddie, Pat, Ravi: Victoria Mboko’s title run at the National Bank Open in Montreal.
Francesco: Gabriela Dabrowski and Erin Routliffe winning the US Open.

Bold Prediction for 2026:

Pete: At least two of the Grand Slams will be won by first-time Slam champions
Mel: Five Canadians will finish the season ranked inside the Top 100 on the WTA Rankings (Mboko, Fernandez, Stakusic, Andreescu, Branstine)
Sarah-Jade: Madison Keys will go back-to-back in Australia
Jonathan: Aryna Sabalenka will reach all four Grand Slam Finals but won’t win any
Eddie: Jessica Pegula with break through and win her first major title.
Pat: Mirra Andreeva will win the WTA Finals
Francesco: Victoria Mboko will break into the Top 10
Ravi: Linda Noskova will make her first Grand Slam final

The National Bank Open Power Rankings are a group collaboration by the Power Rankings Panel which includes:

Pete Borkowski – Manager of Editorial and Player Coverage, Tennis Canada
Melissa Boyd – Content Writer, Tennis Canada
Sarah-Jade Champagne – Content Specialist, Tennis Canada
Jonathan Chan - Content Contributor, Tennis Canada
Edward Lee – Content Contributor, Tennis Canada
Hugues Leger – Producer, Podcast Sur La Ligne
Charlotte Robillard-Millette – Communications Coordinator, Tennis Canada
Abraham Santerre – Content Creator, Podcast Sur La Ligne
Patrick Steski - Content Contributor, Tennis Canada
Francesco Tosini - Content Writer, Tennis Canada
Ravi Ubha - Content Contributor, Tennis Canada

The WTA's best return to Toronto next summer for the National Bank Open presented by Rogers Aug 1 to 13 at Sobeys Stadium. Click here for information about tickets.

Feature Photo : Martin Sidorjak