Editor’s note: As part of the 2024 WTA Fan Awards series, we’re inviting fans to vote on their favorite players, matches and moments from this season. All categories are open, so check WTATennis.com/awards to make your picks. 

Paolini winning Dubai for first WTA 1000 title

Ranked No.26, with just one WTA title to her name, Jasmine Paolini was an outsider in a Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships field that featured nine of the world’s Top 10. But it was a thrill to watch the Italian power through the field, pummeling her forehand with abandon to take out seeds Beatriz Haddad Maia and Maria Sakkari before overturning a 4-2 third-set deficit against Anna Kalinskaya in the final. And it proved no anomaly, but a foreshadowing of a remarkable season that saw Paolini make two Grand Slam finals and end the year as World No.4.

Swiatek meeting Zendaya in Indian Wells

Luca Guadagnino’s “Challengers” was the tennis x pop culture crossover event of 2024 — a critically acclaimed box-office smash that took the sport’s inherent sensuality and drama, and turned the dial all the way up. It was fitting that its star Zendaya, who plays tennis prodigy turned coaching mastermind, was courtside to watch then-No.1 Iga Swiatek’s imperious run to the BNP Paribas Open title in March. After Swiatek had wrapped up her second Indian Wells crown without dropping a set, the pair shared a moment afterward, a meeting of two women at the absolute top of their respective games.

Vote: Head to the 2024 WTA Fan Awards page to cast all your picks!

Swiatek winning Madrid and Rome consecutively

This year, the test of stamina that is the clay season was taken up a notch with both the Mutua Madrid Open and Internazionali BNL d’Italia running over two weeks each. Iga Swiatek met the challenge head on with a 19-match winning streak encompassing the Madrid, Rome and Roland Garros titles — six weeks’ worth of relentless focus and dialed-in tennis that underlined her status as the undisputed queen of clay. Swiatek became just the third player to go sweep Madrid and Rome, and the second (following Serena Williams in 2013) to back that up in Paris as well.

Pegula going back-to-back in Canada

The National Bank Open presents an extra challenge for defending champions with its annual switch between Toronto and Montreal. Until this year, no woman had gone back-to-back in Canada since Martina Hingis in 1999-2000. But in August, Jessica Pegula pulled it off, overcoming a resurgent Amanda Anisimova in three sets in the final. Having endured an injury-afflicted first half of 2024, Pegula’s Canadian double was the start of a spectacular North American summer in which she won 15 out of 17 matches, culminating in her first Grand Slam final at the US Open.

Sabalenka’s Wuhan three-peat

Back before she became a Grand Slam champion, the Dongfeng Voyah · Wuhan Open was Aryna Sabalenka’s happy place. It was the site of her first WTA 1000 crown in 2018, then her second — and first successful title defense — in 2019. Five years that felt like a lifetime later, Sabalenka returned as a three-time major winner to pull off the Wuhan three-peat and extend her unbeaten record at the tournament to 17-0. It was a wild ride of a title run, too, as Sabalenka escaped both Yulia Putintseva and Coco Gauff from seemingly impossible positions, then overcame hometown heroine Zheng Qinwen in a classic final.