Sinner, Andreeva, Draper and Raducanu: The biggest ATP and WTA winners and losers of 2026 so far
Tennis NewsSunday, 16 August 2026 at 12:30
With a large portion of the 2026 season already completed, several players can already draw conclusions about their year and whether it has lived up to the expectations they created at the end of 2025. Some have plenty of good news, such as Jannik Sinner returning to the top of the rankings and Alexander Zverev finally winning his first major title.
Other names have fallen well short of expectations, whether because of injuries or inconsistent results, including British stars Jack Draper and Emma Raducanu, and even former Wimbledon champion Marketa Vondrousova, whose season was derailed by a doping suspension. What follows is a player-by-player breakdown of those storylines, weighing where each name finished 2025 against where they sit today, along with the barriers they broke — or lost — along the way.
Who are the biggest winners and losers - ATP & WTA Rankings
| Player | End 2025 | Now | Change |
| Rafael Jodar | Outside Top 500 | Near Top 10 | 🚀 |
| Alex Eala | No. 51 | Top 20 | 🚀 |
| Linda Noskova | No. 13 | No. 8 | 🚀 |
| Mirra Andreeva | No. 9 | No. 5 | 🚀 |
| Jannik Sinner | No. 2 | No. 1 | ↑ |
| Jack Draper | No. 10 | No. 143 | 📉 |
| Zheng Qinwen | Upper tier | Outside Top 100 | 📉 |
| Holger Rune | Around No. 15 | No. 82 | 📉 |
| Emma Raducanu | No. 29 | No. 49 | 📉 |
| Clara Tauson | No. 12 | No. 42 | 📉 |
| Jasmine Paolini | No. 8 | No. 15 | 📉 |
Biggest Winners
1. Jannik Sinner — from No. 2 to completely untouchable
Sinner closed out 2025 at No. 2, trailing Alcaraz by a razor-thin margin after one of the tightest year-long rivalries the tour has ever produced. The gap between the two at season's end was so small that most observers penciled in another coin-flip battle for 2026, with Alcaraz still holding a slight psychological edge after claiming the year-end top spot for a second time.
Instead, 2026 has turned into a one-man show. Sinner reclaimed No. 1 early in the year and never looked back, and he now sits more than 5,000 points clear of the field after successfully defending his Wimbledon title.
What was billed as a two-horse race has quietly become a runaway, with Sinner's consistency across surfaces making the rest of the Top 5 look like an afterthought. A record of five consecutive Masters 1000 titles and a fifth Grand Slam title are results that would undoubtedly leave Sinner more than satisfied if the season ended today.
2. Mirra Andreeva — teenage prospect to Grand Slam champion
Andreeva ended 2025 at No. 9, already a fixture in the Top 10 as the youngest player in that elite group. The story heading into 2026 wasn't whether she belonged there, but how much higher she could climb once the physical and mental toll of a breakout teenage season settled down. A disappointing end to last year, when she narrowly missed out on the WTA Finals, became the perfect motivation for what has turned into a dominant 2026 campaign.
The Russian began the season at the highest level, winning two titles early in the year and later reaching the final of the Madrid Open. The real breakthrough came in May, when she won her first Grand Slam title at Roland Garros by defeating Maja Chwalinska. Andreeva proved that she is ready for the elite level, and with a long career ahead of her, all the signs suggest this could be the first of many major titles for the 19-year-old.
Mirra Andreeva won Roland Garros
3. Alexander Zverev — same ranking, completely different career
Zverev finished 2025 exactly where he sits today, at No. 3, which on paper looks like a quiet, uneventful year. But the ranking number is misleading, because it hides the one storyline that had followed Zverev for the better part of a decade: the "best player without a Slam" tag that no amount of Masters 1000 titles or deep runs could shake off.
That chapter is finally closed. Zverev won his first career Grand Slam at Roland Garros and reached his maiden Wimbledon final in the same season, finally breaking through on the two surfaces — clay and grass — where he had come agonizingly close before but never sealed the deal. The ranking may not have moved an inch, and he still looks a step behind Sinner in terms of consistency, but he broke the biggest barrier of his career and finally entered history as a Grand Slam champion.
Alexander Zverev won Roland Garros.
4. Linda Noskova — breakthrough into the Top 10
Noskova closed 2025 at No. 13, on the outside of the Top 10 looking in but clearly trending in the right direction after a season that included career-high results and a growing list of wins over elite opposition. Perhaps without the attention of some of the bigger names, many were surprised that Noskova won the Wimbledon title, but her progression had already been showing that she was capable of becoming a genuine Grand Slam contender at any moment.
The young Czech has established herself inside the Top 10 for the first time, reaching a career-high ranking of No. 7 a few weeks ago. At just 21 years old, she is the second-youngest player in the Top 10 behind only Andreeva, and her ability to adapt to every surface, combined with her steady growth on the tour, puts her in a great position to climb even higher next season.
Linda Noskova has had a standout 2026.
5. Alex Eala — from No. 51 to genuine WTA star
Eala ended 2025 at a career-high of No. 51, a remarkable number in its own right for a player who had already rewritten the record books as the first Filipina to crack the WTA Top 100. Still, nothing about that number suggested the kind of season that was coming. The Filipina has established herself as one of the biggest stars on the tour, creating a genuine frenzy among fans, who crowd the courts to watch her play and have made her a center-court attraction at every major tournament she enters.
She has not only gained fame and recognition. The 21-year-old climbed into the Top 20 after breaking several barriers: winning her first title at the WTA 500 DC Open, reaching the second week of a Grand Slam for the first time at Wimbledon, and collecting multiple wins over Top 20 players.
She is no longer just a promising young talent — she is already an established force and a respected name among her peers. The next challenge will be turning that into becoming a true Grand Slam contender over the next few years.
Alex Eala has had a great year.
Special mentions: Kostyuk's first WTA 1000 title and Cobolli's first major final
Marta Kostyuk was floating outside the top tier for most of 2025 and now sits at No. 11 after winning her first-ever WTA 1000 title in Madrid, putting her one strong result away from a long-awaited Top 10 debut. She also reached two Grand Slam semifinals, showing that she is ready to take another step.
Flavio Cobolli finished 2025 outside the Top 10 and has spent 2026 knocking on the door of it, winning in Acapulco, reaching the Munich final, and pushing toward the world's best ten players for the first time in his career. His run to the Roland Garros final was further proof that Cobolli has taken a major step forward.
Iva Jovic, still only 18, has climbed to a career-high No. 16 and continues to look like one of the more complete players among the WTA's next generation.
Rafael Jodar's rise has been even more remarkable: a year ago, he was outside the Top 500, and today he is knocking on the Top 10 door after winning his first ATP title in Marrakech and producing multiple deep runs at Grand Slams and Masters 1000 events. While names such as Jack Draper, Holger Rune and Lorenzo Musetti have lost prominence, Jodar is increasingly looking like one of the players capable of challenging the Sinner-Alcaraz dominance in the coming years.
Biggest Losers
1. Jack Draper - injury and down to just outside top 150
Draper closed out 2025 with his first-ever Top 10 finish at No. 10, even though injuries had already affected the second half of his season after he briefly reached a career-high No. 4. Still, the expectation heading into 2026 was fairly straightforward: stay healthy, and the rest of the climb would take care of itself.
Instead, the opposite happened, and it happened in the cruelest possible way. Draper has crashed all the way down to No. 143 after managing just six tournaments all season, hampered by a bone bruise in his serving arm and knee tendinitis that combined to wipe out all four Grand Slams from his 2026 calendar.
The lowest point came in Montreal, where the 24-year-old broke down in tears mid-match, a moment that summed up just how far the promise of 2025 has drifted from the reality of this season. Draper was expected to develop into a Grand Slam contender, and there are now more questions over whether we will ever see the potential he showed consistently when he was healthy.
2. Zheng Qinwen - injury nightmare continues, drops out of top 100
Zheng ended 2025 still inside the game's upper tier, even as an elbow injury that required surgery after Wimbledon that year had quietly begun affecting her season. The hope for 2026 was a gradual return to the level that had once made her a Grand Slam finalist and Olympic champion. She returned toward the end of 2025 without major results, but there was hope that if she remained healthy, she could quickly climb the rankings in 2026.
Instead, Zheng has been far from the spotlight. Constant injuries, inconsistent results and a fall outside the Top 100 have made Zheng almost unrecognizable compared with the player who reached the Australian Open final and won Olympic gold. The former world No. 4 has had her physical condition as her biggest enemy, although the loss of confidence has also been evident, with surprising defeats even when she has been fit enough to compete.
Zheng Qinwen hasn't managed to recapture that form.
3. Holger Rune - still not back from injury but not all hope is lost
Rune finished 2025 around No. 15, already well removed from the career-high No. 4 he reached back in 2023, but still comfortably inside the conversation of relevant and dangerous top-tier players. The early signs after his injury in October were that he would miss the first months of competition, but there was optimism around a quick return that would allow him to become competitive again during the season.
However, we have reached August and Rune has still been unable to return to the court. He has postponed his comeback several times — from the clay swing to Roland Garros, then Wimbledon and finally the start of the hard-court swing — skipping the DC Open, Canadian Open and Cincinnati. We have not seen Rune in competition in 2026, and there is little optimism after such a long period away from competitive tennis.
Rune has now completed 10 months since his last appearance on the Tour.
4. Emma Raducanu - from Queen's final to all familiar nightmare
Raducanu closed 2025 back inside the Top 30 for the second time in her career, at No. 29, a genuine resurgence that had British tennis fans daring to believe her career was finally stabilizing after years of fits and starts. The expectations for 2026 were cautiously optimistic: build on that foundation, stay fit and keep climbing after years of trying to build momentum.
The injuries had other plans. A Grade 4 stress fracture has now ruled her out of Wimbledon and the US Open in the same season — her second consecutive missed Grand Slam — and Raducanu now sits at No. 49 with real questions hanging over whether she will even return to competition before the year is out. The outlook could be even worse in the coming months, and almost five years after her 2021 US Open title, the Briton is facing another major setback in her career.
5. Jasmine Paolini - from cemented inside top 10 to fighting for top 20 survival
Paolini ended 2025 firmly inside the Top 10 at No. 8, cementing herself as one of the genuine stars of the women's game following back-to-back Grand Slam finals in 2024. Two years established inside the Top 10 made it seem that her consistency could continue into 2026, but she has gradually lost prominence without producing deep runs at the biggest tournaments.
Paolini has fallen out of the Top 10 and now sits at No. 15, with a real chance of finishing the year outside the Top 20 after withdrawing from Cincinnati with a foot injury that capped a season already defined by uncharacteristic early losses and a growing sense of frustration that boiled over in tears during a first-round exit in Stuttgart in April. Physical problems and a lack of confidence at 30 have made it difficult to see Paolini returning to the level of prominence she enjoyed in previous seasons.
Jasmine Paolini falls
Special mentions: Vondrousova's suspension and Musetti's fall
Clara Tauson closed 2025 at No. 12 and now sits at No. 42 after a genuinely rocky year that included a retirement in Adelaide, although she has shown real signs of clawing her way back in recent weeks. She suffered seven consecutive first-round defeats and has managed only seven wins in her last 20 matches, with most of those victories coming against lower-ranked players outside the Top 150.
Lorenzo Musetti, who made his own Top 10 debut at the end of 2025, has since fallen back out of it after a thigh injury cost him both Roland Garros and Wimbledon — two tournaments where he had reached the semifinals a year earlier. While he remains inside the Top 20, the signs of a return to his highest level are still unclear, and few would currently consider him a genuine candidate for a rapid resurgence.
Casper Ruud has not experienced anything close to a collapse, but his season has felt more like treading water than progress, hovering between No. 14 and No. 25 and looking increasingly distant from the No. 2 ranking he reached back in 2022.
Read also
The hardest blow of the entire season, though, belongs to Marketa Vondrousova — and it was not an injury at all. After several seasons marked by injuries, the end of 2025 had offered positive signs with her run to the US Open quarterfinals and a WTA 500 title in Berlin, where she defeated world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka.
However, 2026 brought a devastating blow to her career after an independent tribunal handed the former Wimbledon champion a four-year suspension for refusing an anti-doping test in December 2025. The sanction keeps her off the Tour until 2030 and stands, by a wide margin, as the toughest story to come out of tennis this year.
The verdict
| Category | Player |
| Biggest winner | Sinner |
| Biggest breakthrough | Andreeva |
| Biggest ranking rise | Jodar |
| Biggest career breakthrough | Zverev |
| Biggest loser | Draper |
| Biggest injury setback | Rune |
| Biggest fall | Zheng |
If the season ended today, Sinner would be the obvious overall winner — but Draper's collapse and Andreeva's emergence are arguably the two biggest changes to the landscape of men's and women's tennis.
The biggest questions for the rest of 2026
- Can anyone catch Sinner?
- Can Andreeva win another Slam?
- Can Zverev finally challenge for No. 1?
- Can Eala break into the Top 10?
- Can Draper return before the end of the season?
- Will Rune actually play again in 2026?
- Can Zheng get back inside the Top 50?
Cristhián AvilaTennis Journalist
Cristhián Ávila is a tennis journalist based in Santiago, Chile, and has been part of the TennisUpToDate team since early 2023. He covers the ATP and WTA Tours as well as all four Grand Slams, producing breaking news, match reports, analysis, and regular liveblogs from major tournaments.
His reporting combines statistical analysis with clear explanation, helping readers understand tactical developments, player form, and broader storylines across the tour. Working fluently in both Spanish and English, Cristhián collaborates with an international editorial team and contributes to comprehensive global coverage. As part of his work, he has conducted interviews and media interactions with leading figures in the sport, including Caroline Wozniacki and John McEnroe.
In his journalism, Cristhián places strong emphasis on careful sourcing, editorial accuracy, and updating articles promptly when new, verified information becomes available. His coverage is grounded in research, context, and direct engagement with professional tennis.
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