Elena Rybakina aces WTA Finals for biggest payday in tennis history

What would you do with $5.235 million (£3.984 million)?

Bank it and live off the interest for the rest of your life? Lavish it on family and friends? Donate the whole amount to charity? Splurge it on your very own private island (complete with luxury yacht), a pro sports team or a fleet of high-performance cars? Or maybe you’d prefer to blast off into space?

In reality, very few of us will ever get the opportunity to make such monumental decisions. Not so Elena Rybakina, the Kazakhstan tennis ace who has just pocketed the most prize money won by a tennis player at a single tournament – a pre-tax windfall of $5.235 million – for an undefeated week at the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) Finals in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

No man or woman in professional tennis, and no athlete in the history of women’s sport, has been so handsomely rewarded for their efforts.

At the 2025 US Open in September, Aryna Sabalenka and Carlos Alcaraz collected a then-record $5 million (£3.7 million) each for winning seven matches in New York over a two-week period. Jannik Sinner took home $4.881 million (£3.866 million) for his undefeated streak at the 2024 Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) Finals. And Cori “Coco” Gauff must have been short-changed when she won ‘just’ $4.805 million (£3.711 million) at the 2024 WTA Finals. Her only ‘crime’? Losing a group-stage match.

Clearly, if you have the talent, the stamina and that all-important winning mentality, tennis can make you very rich indeed.

Rybakina has won 11 singles titles on the WTA Tour, with career earnings of $24.438 million (£18.600 million) – $8.456 million of which was accumulated in 2025.

The 26-year-old, a calm, elegant and hard-hitting baseliner, has been no stranger to hefty paydays during her career, having won Wimbledon in 2022 and finished runner-up (to Sabalenka) at the Australian Open in 2023.

And she’s no stranger to Guinness World Records too, having taken part in the longest tie-break in a Grand Slam singles match – 42 points (22-20) – against Anna Blinkova at the Australian Open on 18 January 2024. Just don’t ask Rybakina how that one ended…

But now it’s a whole new ball game for the new world No.5, possessing the sort of financial clout to match her ability and on-court ambition.

Read about more record-breaking sports stars in our Sports and Fitness section.

Speaking to wtatennis.com after the Riyadh final, Rybakina revealed the secret to her success: “I was trying to go for early shots. I was really aggressive, I would say, the whole tournament. The best players, they will give you some chances but not that much. I was taking everything as soon as possible.” 

Asked about her immediate future, Rybakina replied: “I’m going to spend a couple of days in Europe, different cities. And then I’ll see my family. Since I live in Dubai, there are good places to train. So I think I’m going to stay there, in one place. Looking forward to a rest.”

Despite her defeat, four-time Grand Slam winner Sabalenka can take comfort in ending 2025 as the world No.1, and, as runner-up in Riyadh, banking $2.695 million (£2.051 million), a sum that takes her beyond Serena Williams’ 2013 single-season earnings record of $12,385,572 (£7,658,841) – previously the highest earnings in a tennis season (female).

Rybakina, who represents Kazakhstan (the world’s largest landlocked country) but was born in Moscow, Russia, just before the turn of the century, was the last singles player to qualify for the WTA Finals. An 11-match winning streak at China’s Ningbo Open and the Pan Pacific Open in Tokyo, Japan, in the weeks before had given her enough points to sneak into the line-up as one of the eight highest-ranked women on the WTA Tour.

She won all three round-robin matches in the Serena Williams Group – against Amanda Anisimova, Iga Świątek and Ekaterina Alexandrova – and dispatched Jessica Pegula in the semis to advance to the championship match against Sabalenka at the King Saud University Indoor Arena.

Bringing her A-game and a trademark powerful serve that pounded down 13 aces, Rybakina prevailed 6-3, 7-6 in the final, running away with the second-set tie-break by seven points to love.

And she’ll be looking to cash in once again when the 2026 season begins in earnest in Australia and New Zealand in the first week of January.

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