With Aryna Sabalenka winning the Australian Open and US Open, Iga Swiatek winning Roland Garros and Barbora Krejcikova winning Wimbledon, 2024 was the first year in a decade that there were no first-time Grand Slam champions on the women’s side.
The last time that happened was 2014, when Li Na, Maria Sharapova, Petra Kvitova and Serena Williams won the four majors.
So are we due for a first-time major winner in 2025?
If so, we have a list of suspects as to who it might be—the five most accomplished active women’s players yet to win their first major.
Every one of these five players has three things on their resume—they’ve all reached at least one Grand Slam final, they’ve made it to the Top 5 on the WTA rankings, and they’ve won at least one “big” title (a WTA 1000, the Olympics or the WTA Finals).
We begin with…
Zheng Qinwen
The first two names on the list added all three of the above criteria to their resumes in 2024, starting with Zheng, who reached her first Grand Slam final at the Australian Open, won her first big title by capturing the gold medal at the Paris Olympics, then cracked the Top 5 at the very end of the season—she set a career-high ranking of No. 5 after reaching the final of the WTA Finals.
In 2025, the 22-year-old will try to become the second Chinese tennis player ever to win a Grand Slam title, after Li Na, who won Roland Garros in 2011 and the Australian Open in 2014.
Fun fact: Zheng led the women’s tour in aces this year with 445, far ahead of the rest of the field—Elena Rybakina was next with 358.
