Aryna Sabalenka will end the year as world No. 1 for the first time, 12 months on from surrendering the honor in the final stages of the season.

Iga Swiatek’s 3-6, 4-6 defeat to Coco Gauff at the WTA Tour Finals in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia leaves Sabalenka with an insurmountable lead at the top of the WTA rankings, even if Swiatek goes on to lift the trophy for a second year in a row.

Sabalenka won her first two round-robin matches — against Zheng Qinwen and Jasmine Paolini — which extended her lead over Swiatek to 1,446 points. Swiatek won her first match against Barbora Krejcikova, but in losing the second she is now 1,246 points behind Sabalenka with only 1,100 to play for:

Sabalenka could have secured the year-end top spot by beating Elena Rybakina in her final round-robin match Wednesday, regardless of Swiatek’s results. Her two wins in Riyadh also erase the unexpectedness of her unseating Swiatek, announced Monday October 21 after both players dropped points for not playing enough WTA 500-level tournaments across the season.

“I was like, ‘How? What happened?’ My boyfriend actually told me, like, ‘Oh, congrats, you became world No. 1.’ I’m like, ‘What?’”, she said in a news conference in Riyadh.

An astonishing consistency across the Grand Slams and on hard courts has propelled Sabalenka, 26, to the top of the rankings, even though she missed Wimbledon with a shoulder injury. She retained her Australian Open title in January and won her first U.S. Open in September, beating Zheng Qinwen and Jessica Pegula respectively. A serene run to the French Open quarterfinals ended in illness and defeat to Mirra Andreeva, before Sabalenka skipped both Wimbledon and the 2024 Paris Olympics. She has made the semifinals or better at seven of the last eight majors she has played.

Since her return at the Citi Open in Washington, D.C., Sabalenka has won 26 of 29 matches played, sandwiching her U.S. Open title by winning the WTA 1000 Cincinnati and Wuhan Opens. She has four titles for the year to Swiatek’s five, and an 82 percent win-rate compared to 87 for Swiatek, who dropped 1,100 points by missing the China Open in Beijing for personal reasons in the midst of splitting with coach Tomasz Wiktorowski and replacing him with Wim Fissette. Sabalenka’s superior performance at the majors across 2024 (4,430 points to 2,690) has propelled her to the summit.

Who is Aryna Sabalenka?

She has also overcome doubts instilled by what happened 12 months ago. Then she entered the WTA Tour Finals with a lead in the rankings over Swiatek, having moved ahead of her late in the season. Both players made the semifinals, but Swiatek stormed through the field undefeated, beating Sabalenka and then Pegula to win the title and reclaim the world No. 1 ranking, which she would not relinquish for 50 weeks.

Speaking to The Athletic at the start of this year’s event, she said that she came to Riyadh with a different mindset: “I’m more experienced. I have this belief that I can be the best player in the world — it’s just the way I carry myself.

“It’s not about ranking — my results show I can be the best in the world.”

Now the ranking matches her belief.

(Artur Widak / NurPhoto via Getty Images)