Wimbledon storylines: Rivalries between Sabalenka and Gauff, Sinner and Alcaraz highlight field

Is Aryna Sabalenka and Coco Gauff’s olive branch a sign of things on court?

Is Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner’s dominance of men’s tennis about to go up another level?

Wimbledon 2025 promises to be a thriller. We break down two key storylines entering the tournament.

Where does Aryna Sabalenka and Coco Gauff’s rivalry go from here?

Sabalenka is having an outrageous season. She is constantly making finals. She has won tournaments in Brisbane, Miami and Madrid. She is more than 2,000 points ahead of world No. 2 Gauff in the WTA rankings race that counts points won this season.

But it also hurts her that she doesn’t have the three titles she wanted to win more than all the others: the Australian Open, the French Open and Indian Wells. (And Stuttgart. The one that comes with the Porsche car. She really wanted to win the Porsche. And lost the final there. Again.)

Sabalenka isn’t great at losing, just like most champions. She finds it so crushing to lose these matches that while it’s happening, while the world is watching, she’s visibly miserable. She’s yelling at herself. She’s yelling at her team. Every champion who loses feels this way, and only some let it out. It makes Sabalenka one of the most compelling players on the tour, because fans – and her rivals’ fans – live every moment with her like it’s their career on the line.

After losing to Gauff at Roland Garros, Sabalenka spoke, first on court and then in her news conference, about how horribly she played. She barely gave any credit to Gauff until after the event. Then she apologized for what she called her “unprofessional” comments. Then they came to Wimbledon and made a TikTok or two. Gauff said they were good, so the rest of the world should be too. Then Wimbledon posted that on their own social media, which came off more strangely. Should a tournament be casting its top seeds as best friends? Does the tennis world not want more rivalries?

The grass suits Sabalenka. She’s the favorite, hands down. She has the power for it, the serve and the movement, as well as her ever-evolving variety and touch and feel. She’s only won Grand Slams on hard courts, and Wimbledon is the Grand Slam that completes a career, so the pressure is there, but she might be far enough ahead of her rivals for that not to matter.

Gauff’s forehand grip makes it very difficult for her to win on such a low-bouncing surface. Madison Keys, who beat Sabalenka in Australia, could trouble her. Marketa Vondrousova, a potential third-round opponent, beat Sabalenka in Berlin and has won Wimbledon before. The 2022 champion Elena Rybakina cannot be discounted. Iga Swiatek, who uses a similar forehand grip to Gauff, has been making the Bad Homburg grass in Germany her living room this week.

And if Sabalenka does make the final, it’s more likely than not that said final will be stressful, that she will not play a perfect match, because no one ever does.

So can she win? And if she can’t, can she redirect her energy away from the way it manifested in Melbourne, Indian Wells and Paris? Sabalenka is a big Novak Djokovic fan. Djokovic is an incredible winner – he has 24 Grand Slams. He’s also an incredibly gracious loser, in public. That’s taken as the thing to be in tennis – even if some needle is good for business and for the sport.

Who can break the Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner streak – and when?

Remember what it was like to be a tennis fan this time of year between 2006 and 2008, when Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer contested the final of the French Open and Wimbledon for three consecutive years. Federer won the U.S. Open in each of those years, and the Australian Open in 2006 and 2007.

It was an incredible rivalry and a testament to their dominance of the sport. It was great. Wasn’t it?

Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner have now won every Grand Slam since the start of 2024. It’s great. Or is it? And if it isn’t, can anyone who’s going to be contending in three years (that means anyone not named Djokovic) do anything about it?

This is the question that Holger Rune, Lorenzo Musetti, Jack Draper, Ben Shelton and some players even younger than them are going to have to start answering. Tennis, meanwhile, might have to get better acquainted with the difference between a player’s ceiling and their current peak.

Draper has won a Masters 1,000 title, the rung below a Grand Slam. So has Rune. So has Jakub Menšík. Musetti has been in a final at that level. Shelton reserves his best tennis for the majors. But it’s João Fonseca who gets the most adulation, who looks the player best positioned to challenge the Alcaraz-Sinner duopoly despite never being ranked inside the top 50.

Why? He’s 18, sure, but Mensik is barely 19 and inside the top 20. Draper is No. 4 in the world. How can he be the one and not them, when they have better results?

Now we get to ceilings. Alcaraz and Sinner finished inside the top 40 in their first full seasons on the main ATP Tour. Fonseca is on his way to something like that. He has a cannon forehand. He can direct his backhand down the line almost better than he hits it crosscourt. He can take rackets out of top-10 players’ hands. Just not consistently yet, and he hasn’t worked out how to grind reliably when his first plan doesn’t work. Mensik and Learner Tien, who Fonseca beat to win the ATP Next Gen Finals last year, are more ready for deeper runs than Fonseca is for now. For the long term? The Brazilian is ready for the biggest things in the sport.

So is someone coming into disrupt this duopoly anytime soon? Or will Djokovic have to look at the younger generation and realize that, at least for now, he has to do it himself?

To use a favorite phrase of Sinner and Alcaraz, “Let’s see …”