Ten days after she won her third title in Wuhan, with little fanfare, Aryna Sabalenka slipped past Iga Swiatek into the No. 1 spot in the PIF WTA Rankings on Oct. 21, 2024.

One year later, she’s still there.

To put those numbers in context:

  • Venus Williams, Maria Sharapova and Kim Clijsters — who won a total of 16 Grand Slam singles titles — were No. 1 for a combined total of 52 weeks.
  • Naomi Osaka and Dinara Safina combined for 51 weeks at No. 1, the same number solely posted by Victoria Azarenka.
  • Sabalenka, with 60 total weeks at No. 1, is closing in on the career marks of Simona Halep (64) and Caroline Wozniacki (71).

It’s been a tremendous yet demanding year for Sabalenka, 27, who lost in the Australian Open and Roland Garros finals before triumphing at the US Open. With 10,400 points in the Race to the WTA Finals, she’s only the sixth woman to clear 10,000 points in a single season — giving her a 1,700-point-plus cushion over Swiatek. 

“I definitely feel different,” Sabalenka said in Wuhan. “I think those tough losses and things that I had to deal with this year definitely made me stronger as a person and better as a player. 

“And you know, it’s a learning process. And what I learned throughout the years is to accept everything and just do your best at the moment. And that’s it. Basically, that’s all you can control.”

The long, hard climb

These days, it almost seems teenage phenoms are more the norm than the exception. This year, Maya Joint won a pair of titles, in Eastbourne and Rabat, Victoria Mboko ran away with the WTA 1000 event in Montreal and Alexandra Eala made the semifinals in Miami.

The two most famous teens recently to reach the PIF WTA Rankings Top 10 are Coco Gauff and Mirra Andreeva. Gauff did it three years ago at the age of 18 and, after winning titles in Dubai and Indian Wells, Andreeva was 17 — the youngest to reach the Top 10 in nearly 20 years.

It wasn’t like that for Sabalenka, not even close.

She was already 17 when she won her first three ITF titles and, later, three months shy of her 19th birthday when she played her first Hologic WTA Tour main-draw match. Near the end of that 2017 season, she reached the finals in Tianjin, China (losing to Sharapova) and broke into the Top 100 for the first time.

“It was difficult for me, wasn’t easy at all,” Sabalenka said. “I had to go through a lot of tough losses, a lot of tough lessons, and it’s not like I broke that wall and I start winning everything — that didn’t happen to me.

“I had to work really hard to be where I am right now, and I don’t know if I would have to do it now against [today’s] Top 10 players. I would be struggling the same because I think to make this break it’s more about your mentality.”

Clearly, Sabalenka was a gifted athlete. Her unusual combination of power and movement — even among the world’s finest athletes — stood out at an early age.

In 2019, four months shy of her 21st birthday, Sabalenka joined the Top 10 for the first time. In 2022, when she was struggling with double faults, Sabalenka could still lose her footing under pressure. But a year later in Melbourne, she won her first Grand Slam singles title and, in September, ascended to No. 1 at the age of 25.

That ended a 75-week run by Swiatek, who inherited the top spot at the age of 20 when Ashleigh Barty retired. Her initial stay at No. 1 lasted only eight weeks, yet it gave Sabalenka a clearer sense of what it would take to hold the position long term.

“I think everything came with experience, with a lot of pressure,” Sabalenka said at the time. “And I think throughout the years, I’ve learned a lot of things about my emotions, how to handle myself, how to keep motivating myself and how to feel comfortable in my position.

“The best thing, I think, is just to focus on improving yourself.”

In a good place

The 2024 PIF WTA Finals in Riyadh was Sabalenka’s first tournament after reclaiming the No. 1 ranking. She looked tired, losing in the semifinals to eventual champion Coco Gauff.

But after an offseason reset, Sabalenka raced into the finals at the Australian Open, intent on taking her third straight title. Madison Keys had other ideas, however, and put together a terrific three-set win. That moment stalled her momentum; she lost two of three matches in Dubai and Doha.

At the next set of WTA 1000s, she rallied to win 11 of 12 matches and took the title in Miami. She would win on the clay in Madrid for the third time and arrived in Paris, looking for her first Roland Garros title. After she upset Swiatek — the three-time defending champion — 7-6 (1), 4-6 6-0 — it seemed possible. After winning the first-set tiebreak, inevitable.

But Gauff came back to win in three sets, leaving Sabalenka devastated.

“Of course I would love to change a couple of finals,” she said, “but looking back, I think it was, it was needed to learn, learn those lessons, and to, yeah, to become a better player.”

There was another difficult loss, to Amanda Anisimova, in the Wimbledon semifinals, but Sabalenka came back to beat her in the US Open final, repeating her title there. Sabalenka advanced to the semifinals in Wuhan, where she and Jessica Pegula produced one of the season’s best matches, a wild three-setter that went to Pegula.

As she prepares for Riyadh’s second year-end championship, Sabalenka feels good about where she is — still on top.

“I would rate my season as pretty successful,” she said in Wuhan. “The goal is the same, to improve myself every day, to keep the position of World No. 1, to see how far I can get in this sport and how, how much I can win.

“Hopefully I can keep doing what I am doing and keep winning.”

Sabalenka was asked about her legacy and, point blank, if she wants to be considered an all-time great.

“Almost all of us want to beat all the records, and I think it’s so obvious,” she said. The right thing to do is focus on yourself, on your game, on developing yourself as the player and the person and if you deserve these big titles, if you deserve to beat some records.

“It’s going to be really tough to compete with the [23] Grand Slam titles that Serena [Williams] has. So I guess for me, the goal is to go as far as I can in this sport, and I do my best every day. I dedicate my life to the sport. So I really hope that by the end of my career, I’ll sit back, I’ll look at my results, and I’ll be really proud of myself.”