What will the men’s and women’s ranking lists look like at the end of the 2025 season? A few days ago, I attempted to predict which players would crack the top 100. Today, we’re playing for bigger stakes: The names at the top the table.
As with the top-100-breakthrough forecast, the most important inputs are current Elo rank and current ATP or WTA rank. Elo tells us how well someone is playing, and the official ranking tells us how well that translated into points. After all, ranking points are what will determine the list in a year’s time, too.
The cumulative ATP and WTA rankings reflect whether a player missed time in the previous year; while that isn’t always indicative of whether he or she will be absent again, injuries often recur and some pros have a hard time staying on court. The official ranking also gives some players a head start over others: The 32nd seed at the Australian Open is more likely to reach the second week than the best unseeded player, even if they have roughly the same skill level.
Age is crucial, as well. The younger the player, the more we expect him or her to improve over the course of the year. Later than the mid-20s, however, results trend (usually!) in the other direction.
I tested the usefulness of myriad other variables, including height, handedness, and surface preference. None unambiguously improved the model. I ended up using just one more input: last year’s Elo rank. Current ranks have more predictive value, but last year’s position helps, as it offers a clue as to whether a player’s current level is sustainable.
Enough chatter–let’s start with the forecast for the 2025 year-end women’s rankings:
YE 25 Player Age YE 24 Elo 24 Elo 23
1 Aryna Sabalenka 26.7 1 1 3
2 Iga Swiatek 23.6 2 2 1
3 Coco Gauff 20.8 3 3 2
4 Qinwen Zheng 22.2 5 4 8
5 Elena Rybakina 25.5 6 6 5
6 Jasmine Paolini 29.0 4 9 28
7 Jessica Pegula 30.9 7 8 4
8 Paula Badosa 27.1 12 5 24
9 Emma Navarro 23.6 8 16 53
10 Mirra Andreeva 17.7 16 15 26
11 Diana Shnaider 20.7 13 12 100
12 Daria Kasatkina 27.7 9 19 16
13 Karolina Muchova 28.4 22 7 6
14 Barbora Krejcikova 29.0 10 22 14
15 Marta Kostyuk 22.5 18 20 38
16 Anna Kalinskaya 26.1 14 23 31
17 Madison Keys 29.9 21 11 12
18 Beatriz Haddad Maia 28.6 17 17 18
19 Jelena Ostapenko 27.6 15 29 13
20 Marketa Vondrousova 25.5 39 10 9
21 Danielle Collins 31.0 11 31 22
22 Linda Noskova 20.1 26 35 42
23 Donna Vekic 28.5 19 27 41
24 Liudmila Samsonova 26.1 27 26 11
25 Leylah Fernandez 22.3 31 30 20
YE 2025 Player Age YE 24 Elo 24 Elo 23
26 Victoria Azarenka 35.4 20 13 29
27 Elina Svitolina 30.3 23 24 19
28 Ons Jabeur 30.3 42 14 7
29 Maria Sakkari 29.4 32 21 15
30 Katie Boulter 28.4 24 33 62
31 Amanda Anisimova 23.3 36 28
32 Anastasia Potapova 23.8 35 36 36
33 Emma Raducanu 22.1 56 18
34 Yulia Putintseva 30.0 29 25 55
35 Magdalena Frech 27.0 25 51 85
36 Elise Mertens 29.1 34 37 33
37 Xin Yu Wang 23.3 37 59 57
38 Ekaterina Alexandrova 30.1 28 48 25
39 Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova 33.5 30 32 35
40 Marie Bouzkova 26.4 44 44 30
41 Elina Avanesyan 22.3 43 60 131
42 Lulu Sun 23.7 40 56 182
43 Peyton Stearns 23.2 47 53 113
44 Katerina Siniakova 28.6 45 38 40
45 Olga Danilovic 23.9 51 50 82
46 Ashlyn Krueger 20.7 64 54 67
47 Camila Osorio 23.0 59 49 56
48 Dayana Yastremska 24.6 33 104 96
49 Clara Tauson 22.0 50 83 64
50 Karolina Pliskova 32.8 41 40 39
No big surprises here–that’s the nature of a model like this. Where players are predicted to move up or down, it’s usually because their Elo rank is notably higher or lower than their official position, like Muchova or Paolini. Mirra Andreeva, the youngest woman in the top 175, is expected to gradually work her way into the top ten.
Getting fuzzier
Of course, there’s considerable uncertainty. When we check in at the end of the 2025 season, we’ll find some substantial moves, like Paolini in 2024. We can get a better idea of that uncertainty by forecasting the likelihood that players reach certain thresholds.
Here is each top player’s probability of becoming the 2025 year-end number one:
Player p(#1) Aryna Sabalenka 42.3% Iga Swiatek 32.6% Coco Gauff 21.1% Qinwen Zheng 6.9% Elena Rybakina 4.3% Jasmine Paolini 2.8% Jessica Pegula 2.4% Emma Navarro 0.9% Paula Badosa 0.9% Daria Kasatkina 0.9% Barbora Krejcikova 0.7% Mirra Andreeva 0.7% Diana Shnaider 0.5% Karolina Muchova 0.5%
This is not the list I would have made. Again, this type of model isn’t going to give you big surprises, and there’s no consideration for things like playing styles. Intuitively, a big breakthrough from Andreeva (or Shnaider) seems more likely than a belated push from Kasatkina, or even Pegula.
In any event, we get an idea of how much the ranking list can shuffle itself in a year’s time. Even beyond these 14 names, the model gives another 20 women at least a one-in-a-thousand chance to end the year at the top.
We can run a similar exercise to get the odds that each player ends the season in the top 5, 10, or 20:
Player p(top 5) p(top 10) p(top 20)
Aryna Sabalenka 82.4% 95.8% 99.3%
Iga Swiatek 81.0% 94.9% 98.9%
Coco Gauff 75.5% 92.7% 98.3%
Qinwen Zheng 50.3% 80.3% 95.5%
Elena Rybakina 32.5% 65.5% 90.3%
Jessica Pegula 15.5% 42.0% 78.4%
Paula Badosa 15.2% 41.5% 81.7%
Mirra Andreeva 13.7% 34.5% 68.3%
Jasmine Paolini 13.1% 38.4% 77.7%
Karolina Muchova 10.6% 30.2% 69.8%
Diana Shnaider 8.8% 25.7% 64.6%
Emma Navarro 7.9% 24.0% 60.2%
Marketa Vondrousova 6.6% 19.2% 53.8%
Daria Kasatkina 5.8% 18.3% 49.6%
Marta Kostyuk 4.9% 14.9% 43.4%
Madison Keys 4.9% 15.8% 49.7%
Barbora Krejcikova 4.2% 13.5% 40.2%
Beatriz Haddad Maia 3.8% 12.1% 39.7%
Anna Kalinskaya 3.5% 11.2% 35.8%
Jelena Ostapenko 3.0% 9.4% 28.8%
Leylah Fernandez 2.9% 8.5% 25.8%
Liudmila Samsonova 2.8% 8.6% 27.0%
Linda Noskova 2.8% 8.2% 24.9%
Ons Jabeur 2.8% 8.7% 31.7%
Maria Sakkari 1.9% 6.1% 23.1%
Player p(top 5) p(top 10) p(top 20)
Danielle Collins 1.9% 6.3% 22.5%
Elina Svitolina 1.7% 5.7% 21.6%
Donna Vekic 1.7% 5.4% 21.1%
Victoria Azarenka 1.6% 5.9% 28.2%
Anastasia Potapova 1.5% 4.5% 15.8%
Emma Raducanu 1.5% 4.7% 21.6%
Amanda Anisimova 1.1% 3.5% 15.4%
Yulia Putintseva 1.0% 3.4% 15.1%
Katie Boulter 1.0% 3.3% 13.5%
Marie Bouzkova 0.8% 2.4% 8.8%
Elise Mertens 0.8% 2.5% 10.1%
Xin Yu Wang 0.8% 2.3% 7.8%
Ashlyn Krueger 0.8% 2.1% 7.3%
Camila Osorio 0.7% 2.0% 7.4%
Ekaterina Alexandrova 0.7% 2.1% 7.9%
Magdalena Frech 0.6% 2.0% 8.0%
Katerina Siniakova 0.6% 2.0% 8.1%
Olga Danilovic 0.6% 1.8% 6.8%
Peyton Stearns 0.6% 1.7% 6.6%
Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova 0.6% 1.9% 8.9%
Elina Avanesyan 0.6% 1.7% 6.2%
Clara Tauson 0.5% 1.4% 4.3%
Lulu Sun 0.5% 1.5% 5.9%
Eva Lys 0.4% 1.2% 4.8%
Elisabetta Cocciaretto 0.4% 1.2% 4.1%
Most interesting to me in this table is where the columns diverge. Andreeva, with her unrealized potential, ranks higher on the top-5 list than by top-10 or top-20 probability. Azarenka, though she has little chance of returning to the top ten, is more likely than her list-neighbors to hang inside the top 20.
The same variation means that there are some new names in the table. Eva Lys, for instance, is forecast to land at #65 ahead of the 2026 season. But because she is young and has already posted multiple top-100 seasons by Elo rating, she has an outsized chance of a major breakout. The women who were displaced are either fringy veterans, like Pliskova, or those whose Elo ratings didn’t match their WTA rank, such as Yastremska.
(These forecasts are probably more accurate than the year-end-number-one table above. There haven’t been many year-end number ones, by definition, so there’s less data to draw upon.)
Long may Sinner reign
Now for the men. I’ve extended this list to 51 for obvious reasons:
YE 25 Player Age YE 24 Elo 24 Elo 23
1 Jannik Sinner 23.4 1 1 2
2 Carlos Alcaraz 21.7 3 3 3
3 Alexander Zverev 27.7 2 4 5
4 Taylor Fritz 27.2 4 6 10
5 Daniil Medvedev 28.9 5 5 4
6 Novak Djokovic 37.6 7 2 1
7 Holger Rune 21.7 13 10 12
8 Jack Draper 23.0 15 8 19
9 Casper Ruud 26.0 6 21 16
10 Alex de Minaur 25.9 9 16 11
11 Andrey Rublev 27.2 8 18 6
12 Stefanos Tsitsipas 26.4 11 14 9
13 Tommy Paul 27.6 12 11 18
14 Hubert Hurkacz 27.9 16 9 8
15 Grigor Dimitrov 33.6 10 7 7
16 Ugo Humbert 26.5 14 17 13
17 Lorenzo Musetti 22.8 17 20 50
18 Arthur Fils 20.6 20 25 38
19 Ben Shelton 22.2 21 22 17
20 Sebastian Korda 24.5 22 15 22
21 Tomas Machac 24.2 25 12 33
22 Karen Khachanov 28.6 19 19 23
23 Felix Auger Aliassime 24.4 29 28 15
24 Frances Tiafoe 26.9 18 33 26
25 Matteo Berrettini 28.7 34 13 14
YE 25 Player Age YE 24 Elo 24 Elo 23
26 Alexei Popyrin 25.4 24 27 75
27 Jiri Lehecka 23.1 28 39 46
28 Flavio Cobolli 22.7 32 30 136
29 Alex Michelsen 20.4 41 35 134
30 Jakub Mensik 19.3 48 37 119
31 Mpetshi Perricard 21.5 31 43 192
32 Francisco Cerundolo 26.4 30 36 25
33 Matteo Arnaldi 23.9 37 48 31
34 Sebastian Baez 24.0 27 67 40
35 Brandon Nakashima 23.4 38 42 70
36 Jordan Thompson 30.7 26 29 51
37 Juncheng Shang 19.9 50 52
38 Tallon Griekspoor 28.5 40 32 24
39 Alejandro Tabilo 27.6 23 54 121
40 Denis Shapovalov 25.7 56 34 34
41 T M Etcheverry 25.5 39 58 65
42 Alexander Bublik 27.5 33 59 44
43 Davidovich Fokina 25.6 61 46 28
44 Roman Safiullin 27.4 60 38 27
45 Nicolas Jarry 29.2 35 63 20
46 Nuno Borges 27.9 36 53 88
47 Thanasi Kokkinakis 28.7 77 24 61
48 Luciano Darderi 22.9 44 106 122
49 Miomir Kecmanovic 25.3 54 65 71
50 Jan Lennard Struff 34.7 42 26 35
51 Joao Fonseca 18.4 145 45
The men’s ranking model is more accurate than the women’s version, though that may be because it is built, in part, on the unusually stable Big Three/Big Four era. That stability might be gone, taking the reliability of this model with it. (The men’s model predicted the log of next year’s ranking with an adjusted r-squared of .631, compared to .580 for the women.) So again, if it looks boring, that’s the nature of the beast.
Still: We have Carlos Alcaraz taking back the number two spot, Holger Rune returning to the top ten, and Jack Draper following him in. In the other direction, we see Grigor Dimitrov’s age catching up to him, dropping five spots from his current position.
At the bottom of the list, we find Joao Fonseca bounding up nearly 100 ranking spots in a single season. That already feels conservative, less than one week into his season. All of these numbers are based on 2024 year-end rankings, yet Fonseca is up 18 places in the live rankings with his run to the Canberra Challenger final. He’d gain another 14 with a win tomorrow.
What about Novak?
The table above shows Novak Djokovic in 6th place, a prediction that aggregates a vast range of possibilities. Here are the odds of various players ending 2025 at the top of the list:
Player p(#1) Jannik Sinner 56.4% Carlos Alcaraz 22.5% Novak Djokovic 14.6% Alexander Zverev 3.8% Daniil Medvedev 3.4% Taylor Fritz 1.3% Holger Rune 1.2% Jack Draper 1.2% Hubert Hurkacz 1.0% Grigor Dimitrov 0.7%
No one else is even half as likely as Dimitrov to end the season ranked #1. Sinner is the clear favorite, with virtually every stat in his favor. Alcaraz is expected to improve. Djokovic, though, is the clear number three, far ahead of the other players above him in the previous table.
This is partly to be expected: He ended 2024 in second place on the Elo list. He didn’t play a full schedule, but he posted great results much of the time he played, and Alcaraz wasn’t consistent enough to capitalize on the veteran’s step back. Beyond that, remember that the model considers last year’s Elo rank as well. Twelve months ago, Djokovic still had a strong claim to be the best player in the world. His age counts against him, but he is one of only a few players in the 2025 field who has proven he can reach the top.
Novak’s 6th-place forecast, then, averages a disproportionately high probability of a resurgence with all the things that can happen to 37-year-old athletes. He’s more likely than, say, (projected) #5 Medvedev or #7 Rune to claim the top spot, but he’s also more likely to fall down the list due to injury or lack of interest.
Djokovic looks like less of an outlier when we see the chances of top-5, top-10, and top-20 finishes this year:
Player p(5) p(10) p(20)
Jannik Sinner 95.6% 98.9% 99.8%
Carlos Alcaraz 84.5% 95.7% 99.2%
Alexander Zverev 61.7% 88.4% 97.5%
Daniil Medvedev 38.5% 71.8% 92.6%
Taylor Fritz 34.1% 72.0% 92.9%
Novak Djokovic 32.4% 59.8% 86.4%
Holger Rune 20.3% 52.8% 86.1%
Jack Draper 15.6% 46.3% 82.2%
Hubert Hurkacz 9.8% 29.9% 68.2%
Andrey Rublev 9.8% 31.8% 70.8%
Stefanos Tsitsipas 9.6% 31.6% 70.6%
Alex de Minaur 9.5% 32.9% 72.1%
Grigor Dimitrov 8.3% 27.0% 63.1%
Casper Ruud 7.7% 31.1% 70.6%
Tommy Paul 7.1% 26.8% 65.0%
Ugo Humbert 5.3% 20.2% 56.9%
Ben Shelton 4.8% 18.5% 55.8%
Sebastian Korda 4.5% 17.8% 53.5%
Tomas Machac 4.4% 18.3% 54.3%
Arthur Fils 3.7% 17.0% 54.0%
Lorenzo Musetti 3.4% 16.6% 52.3%
Matteo Berrettini 2.4% 8.7% 32.2%
Felix Auger Aliassime 2.1% 8.2% 32.7%
Karen Khachanov 2.0% 8.8% 32.8%
Frances Tiafoe 1.3% 6.3% 25.9%
player p(5) p(10) p(20)
Jiri Lehecka 1.0% 5.0% 22.7%
Alexei Popyrin 0.9% 5.4% 23.1%
Francisco Cerundolo 0.8% 3.8% 17.3%
Flavio Cobolli 0.7% 4.5% 20.7%
Jakub Mensik 0.7% 4.1% 20.0%
Alex Michelsen 0.7% 4.2% 20.2%
Matteo Arnaldi 0.7% 3.0% 14.7%
Tallon Griekspoor 0.6% 2.4% 11.0%
Brandon Nakashima 0.5% 2.8% 13.9%
Denis Shapovalov 0.5% 2.2% 10.5%
Sebastian Baez 0.5% 2.5% 12.6%
Mpetshi Perricard 0.5% 3.3% 16.2%
Jordan Thompson 0.4% 2.3% 10.3%
Davidovich Fokina 0.4% 1.5% 7.6%
Roman Safiullin 0.4% 1.5% 7.1%
Juncheng Shang 0.3% 2.0% 10.8%
Nicolas Jarry 0.3% 1.2% 5.7%
Thanasi Kokkinakis 0.3% 1.2% 5.7%
Alexander Bublik 0.3% 1.3% 6.6%
T M Etcheverry 0.3% 1.4% 7.1%
Alejandro Tabilo 0.2% 1.5% 7.5%
Jan Lennard Struff 0.2% 1.0% 4.3%
Joao Fonseca 0.2% 1.0% 5.7%
Nuno Borges 0.2% 1.0% 5.2%
Miomir Kecmanovic 0.2% 0.9% 4.5%
The various models don’t quite agree: It can’t really be the case that if Djokovic cracks the top five (32.4% here), it’s nearly 50/50 whether he ends the season at number one. From outside of the models, we can be particularly skeptical, since we know that Novak isn’t likely to play a full schedule. Still, we can glean something from the juxtaposition: There’s not a lot of middle ground for the all-time-great.
Again, it’s worth peeking at the bottom of the list. Fonseca makes this one, too, with a nearly 6% chance of a top-20 debut this year. (Actually, a debut is even more likely, since this is the stricter probability of a year-end top-20 finish.) It seems a bit crazy to say that the 18-year-old has the same top-20 chances as Nicolas Jarry. On the other hand, Fonseca leads Jarry on the Elo table by a healthy margin. He may already be the stronger player.
Few pros are likely catapult up or down the rankings like Fonseca. Plenty will make moves that these models don’t foresee. With the information available at the beginning of the season, we can get a general sense of how things will change over the next twelve months. Now for the good part: We get to find out how the models were wrong.
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