The most accomplished active women’s tennis players seeking their first major title in 2025

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.

Jasmine Paolini

From the world No. 5 to the world No. 4, now—next up is Paolini, who also added all three criteria to her resume this year, winning her first big title at the WTA 1000 event in Dubai, then not only reaching her first Grand Slam final at Roland Garros, but reaching her second Grand Slam final at Wimbledon a month later. She made her Top 5 debut after that Wimbledon run, then got to No. 4 in October.

In 2025, the 28-year-old will try to become the third Italian woman to win a Grand Slam title, following 2010 Roland Garros champion Francesca Schiavone and 2015 US Open winner Flavia Pennetta.

Fun fact: With her runs in Paris and London, Paolini is actually the only Italian woman to reach the final at two different majors. Jannik Sinner is the only Italian man to achieve the feat.

Jessica Pegula

Pegula shattered her Grand Slam quarterfinal block at the US Open this year—having been 0-6 in that round beforehand, she not only reached her first major semifinal, and with a win over world No. 1 Iga Swiatek, no less, but she then battled back from a set and a break down to beat Karolina Muchova and reach the final. It was the only one of the three criteria missing from her resume, having already won three WTA 1000s and been ranked as high as No. 3.

The pressure will be off of Pegula for most of the Grand Slam season in 2025, too—in 2024, she lost in the second round of both the Australian Open and Wimbledon, and she missed Roland Garros (and the European clay-court season entirely) due to a rib injury.

Ons Jabeur

It was a difficult 2024 season for Jabeur, health-wise, beginning the year at No. 6 and still being ranked in the Top 10 as recently as the summer, but having to end her season in August due to a shoulder injury and dropping to No. 42 by the November 11th year-end rankings. But, if healthy, she could be a big threat in 2025.

The Tunisian has a full resume, having reached three Grand Slam finals at Wimbledon and the US Open in 2022 and Wimbledon again in 2023, going as high as No. 2 on the WTA rankings and even capturing a big title, at the WTA 1000 event in Madrid in 2022.

Fun fact: several big names have lost their first three major finals and not only gone on to win one, but several major titles—Chris Evert, Ivan Lendl, Kim Clijsters and Andy Murray, to name a few.

Karolina Pliskova

It was also a tough 2024 for Pliskova, who had to end her season after the US Open due to a foot injury and finished the year at No. 41 on the year-end rankings, right next to Jabeur. There were some good signs for the big-serving Czech, though, including an 11-match winning streak in February that brought her a 17th career WTA title in Cluj-Napoca, as well as another final on grass in Nottingham.

Pliskova probably has one of the fullest resumes of anyone without a Grand Slam title—she’s actually one of only three women to reach No. 1 on the WTA rankings who’s yet to win a major, and the other two (Dinara Safina and Jelena Jankovic) are both retired from professional tennis now. She’s been to two major finals, at the 2016 US Open and 2021 Wimbledon, and she has two WTA 1000 titles.

Honorable Mentions

One other active woman, Vera Zvonareva, has all three of the criteria on her resume too—she reached No. 2, got to two Grand Slam finals at Wimbledon and the US Open in 2010 and won a big title at Indian Wells in 2009. But she’s become more of a doubles specialist the last few years, and she’s been inactive since June.

There are some other prominent active women’s players who've accomplished two of the three criteria, with some of them missing just a Grand Slam final (Paula Badosa, Elina Svitolina, Maria Sakkari, Caroline Garcia and Belinda Bencic), some missing just a Top 5 ranking (Danielle Collins and Madison Keys) and some missing a big title on their resume (Sara Errani and Eugenie Bouchard).