The 2025 professional tennis season has come to a close, and what a year it was.
From the dominance of superstars Carlos Alcaraz, Jannik Sinner and Aryna Sabalenka, to the continued emergence of players like Amanda Anisimova and Ben Shelton and the return to the top of Naomi Osaka, this season truly had something for everyone.
Alcaraz and Sinner all but ran the ATP — the pair split all four of the major titles — but there was considerably more parity among the elite women of the WTA Tour. Four different players — Madison Keys, Coco Gauff, Iga Swiatek and Sabalenka — won the Slams. And throughout the year, in both the ATP and the WTA, there were a number of surprise victors and compelling storylines. It all combined to make one very memorable season.
Who deserves to take home the top honors? ESPN’s Chris Evert, Sam Querrey and Pam Shriver voted on who should be named the ATP and WTA Players of the Year. And we couldn’t help but bestow some more titles on some of our other (perhaps slightly less-quantifiable) favorites from the year.
ATP Player of the Year: Carlos Alcaraz
The 2025 ATP season was defined almost exclusively by two men and their rivalry: Alcaraz and Sinner. And while those two set themselves apart from everyone else — more points separate No. 2 Sinner from No. 3 Alexander Zverev (6,340) than distance Zverev from the 1,000th-ranked player (5,145) in the world — very little differentiated the Big Two from one another. Alcaraz won the French Open and the US Open and ended the year at No. 1 for the second time in his career, and Sinner was victorious at the Australian Open and Wimbledon and finished the year with the title at the ATP Finals for the second consecutive season.
In fact, the margin was so miniscule, Evert said she simply couldn’t pick between them and declared it to be a tie.