Melissa Kenny writes Racquet’s See You In Court, a regular advice column in which Melissa Kenny, a famously mediocre lifelong player, heeds reader questions about tennis. She also writes Hard Hitting, a Substack about the thrills and frustrations of recreational tennis.
At long last! This weekend, the world’s best woman, Aryna Sabalenka, will take on irrelevant misogynist and world number 672, Nick Kyrgios, in a birdbrained spectacle that will surely spur an embarrassment of riches if the riches are cheap, widely circulated Instagram reels; along with Dubaians in seats and eyeballs on screens to generate riches in the prosaic sense. Prize money isn’t being disclosed, but we can assume there are enough zeros to silence any squirmy feelings Sabalenka may or may not have about walking back the progress of her predecessors.
The above isn’t flattering but it isn’t terribly embellished, either. For the sake of a point; counterpoint setup, I’ll say that naturally, I find much of Kyrgios’ buffoonery entertaining. It’s also quite likely that Kyrgios’ upbringing—like mine—in very white, very racist Australia nurtured the shameless adult bully he is today. But context notwithstanding, the fact remains: it’s a ghastly idea to platform a man in the name of gender dynamics who, in 2022, aired a “low-key” fondness for Andrew Tate (that he’s since tried to scrub from the internet); in 2023, pleaded guilty to assaulting his ex-girlfriend; and famously, in 2024, brought us “second serve,” a cowardly twitter comment aimed at Jannik Sinner, given Kyrgios dated Kalinskaya—an ownable asset—first. I may or may not have chuckled at “second serve” because I am a WIP (woman in progress.) Shame on us both.
Choosing this particular man for this particular job feels like a crude metaphor for the wholesale sexism—stay with me; I’m going somewhere else—that permeates tennis. But who among us is surprised? Now that tennis represents a broader purview, it churns out the same cheap tricks as the overstimulated ecosystem it dwells in: shock jockery, cash grabs, frenzied efforts for “engagement” that materialize as gauche emblems of brodernity.
I turn your attention, instead, to the real battle of the sexes: that women’s tennis is amply more exciting than men’s. I’m possessed to call it labyrinthine—so fickle and so dislocating are its results—though the WTA did anoint Aryna Sabalenka the player of the year, and few disagreed. And yet, but still, women’s tennis in 2025 did not have a reliable auteur; an out-in-front protagonist. All of this to say? Whisper WTA in my ear and watch these arm hairs stand tall and proud.
Four different women won as many slams—though more stood a chance. (Seven? Maybe eight?) In January, Madison Keys started the year as she meant to go on; taking the deciding set from Sabalenka (7-5) to win the Australian Open and her first grand slam title at the objectively jaded age of almost-thirty. (Maybe she’s born with it? Maybe it’s the serve reconstruction, or the Yonex Ezone 98 she switched to from her long-time Wilson.) Both cried—one beneath a towel courtside; the other, elated, embracing her husband and coach. You’d be forgiven for forgetting about Keys’ win, not just because it was eleven months ago, but because her level waned after March.
Peeking through fingers, we reluctantly witnessed Iga Swiatek’s nought and nought dismantling of Amanda Anisimova in the Wimbledon final. Tenable sources tell me ‘partying with friends’ played a role in her mental and emotional rehab—a healthy and respectable route for a woman of 24. She told us with her own mouth that she watched the Wimbledon final the night prior (“I was slow as hell!”) to her subsequent meeting with Iga in the US Open quarters. She went on to win persuasively. Our mouths hung agape.
At this juncture, my adversaries might say that Jannik Sinner or Carlos Alcaraz would never seek comeuppance from a double-bagel because it’s a scoreline they’d never fall victim to. Throughout this assessment, genteel reader, remember that these are matters of electricity—of arm hairs—and not of consistent superiority.
Coco’s performances were the most perplexing of all. Show me a match in which her fallible shots betray her, and she will show you a nasty, scrappy, unwieldy way to win. Where serves and forehands fail, her backhand speaks, and her eyes have been known to cry—nevertheless, she persists. It’s a reputation that’s as impressive as it is worrying; one that sees supernatural mental grit tussle with a total disbelief in half her strokes; and plausibly, herself. Naturally, her opponents probe at what breaks down. But, in some dubious place between self-betrayal and desperation, she wins matches—like her French Open final defeat over a crotchety Sabalenka, 23 double-faults and all. Finding success in the wrong places must feel a bit like spending all day cooking for a dinner party at which everyone’s favorite part is the store-bought dessert.
You might argue that Coco wouldn’t fetch such success if the wider habitat of women’s tennis weren’t so mercurial—but that’s exactly where the delight lies. Will her move to replace Matt Daly with biomechanist Gavin MacMillan—who took Sabalenka’s serve from yipping to ripping—help her serve in a sustainable way? Can your relationship with your forehand (complicated!) be repaired after a stretch of turmoil? In J.Lo and Ben Affleck, we see there is hope.
And wherefore art thou Paolini, who reached the finals of both natural court slams in 2024? Knee and ankle injuries shoulder some blame. What a tragicomedy that Rybakina, a player whose remarkably complete game never seems commensurate with her victories—couldn’t locate her best tennis until November to take out Sabalenka in straight sets and win the WTA finals. When the score hit six games apiece in the second, anyone with a passing interest in tennis probably settled in for a deciding set given Sabalenka’s then-tiebreak run of 21-1. Instead, Rybakina surrendered no points, taking it 7-0. So convincing was the result that it called forth her 2022 Wimbledon win and made me—and maybe you—wonder when the sophomore slam would come. Injury, again, can’t go unmentioned. But so it goes: players overplay, or eject themselves from low-stakes events to stay healthy, and tennis keeps right on overscheduling 💀
Victoria Mboko famously ascended the rankings from 333 to close out the year at #18 in the world, after overcoming a slew of grand slam winners—Coco, Rybakina, and Osaka in the final—to win the National Bank Open on home soil in Montreal just shy of her nineteenth birthday. She of pending Dove deodorant deal, Lou Boisson, reached the semis at the French Open after toppling Mertens, Pegula, and Andreeva, who started the year by winning two of the biggest non-slam WTA 1000 events—Dubai and Indian Wells—back to back. Just seventeen at the time, she came back from a set down against, yep, Sabalenka (very deserving of the annual accolade, you see) to win the latter. An “expensive lego set” was procured with some of the winnings.
I have bulldozer tendencies, so it’s nice to be reminded that brute force isn’t everything all of the time. Newcomer Alex Eala has a cunning lefty serve —though delicate it is, typically clocking between 70 and 85 miles per hour**. That didn't stop her from beating both Iga and Keys in straight sets in Miami this year. She’ll end the year ranked #53; up from 147, and as the first ever Filipina to make the second round of a slam—making a profound comeback from 1-5 down in the third to upset fourteenth seed, Clara Tauson, no less. (That day at the US Open, I was watching a neighboring match. The raucous cheering over at Eala’s court told me I’d picked the wrong one.)
The men’s draw wasn’t entirely humdrum. There was Valentin Vacherot winning a 1000 ranked #104 in the world, Felix Auger-Allisiame‘s very cogent return post-knee injury, lucky loser Botic Van De Zandschulp beating Djokovic in straight sets.
But as you know, a couple of sure things split the men’s bill squarely down the middle this year. No-one else chipped in materially because no-one had the means. The men’s 2025 French Open final was some of the best shit we as spectators could ever hope to bear witness to. The kind of stuff that impels you to scream at a sports bar TV and hug a stranger. But will a hot new islander—a Draper, a Fritz, a Shelton—enter the villa in 2026 and force them to new heights? Someone to be what Djokovic was to Federer and Nadal? A more reasonable hypothesis might be that either Sin or Caraz kicks into a sickening never-before-seen gear and breaks away from the other. Leaving everyone else… where exactly?!
Call me a masochist, but I want to be seduced, tricked, appalled and taken for a fool, before finally being proven wrong. And right now, only the women can do that.
*In 1973, the original iteration had an actually meaningful raison d’etre, and Billie Jean-King’s straight sets defeat over self-proclaimed male chauvinist, Bobby Riggs, generated tangible momentum for the women's liberation movement. This year’s event belongs to the frenetic cash-grabby exhibition circuit (watch it live on the Tennis Channel in the US; or via UK giant, the BBC) while actively trivializing women’s sports, with Sabalenka’s side of the court being 9% smaller than Kyrgios’ to “reflect” uncorroborated “data” that men are 9% faster than women, lol.
**Sara Errani who is only 5’4 has a similarly paced serve. Nearly four-and-a-half inches shorter than Eala, Errani peaked at a ranking of world #5 in singles in 2017 (though she’s won nine doubles grand slams).
