Leylah Fernandez and the weight of New York: did the 2021 finalist live up to the promise?

On a Friday in Ningbo, Leylah Fernandez will try to win her 16th match at the WTA 500 level this season, which would extend a lead she already holds over everyone else on tour. She has 15 such wins in 2026, one more than Mirra Andreeva and Jessica Pegula. Her opponent is Ekaterina Alexandrova, who leads their head-to-head 3-2 but lost to Fernandez last week in Wuhan. It is a good moment to ask what kind of player she has become.

That question has followed her since September 2021, when she reached the US Open final as a 19-year-old ranked No. 73. A run like that sets a standard that no ordinary career can meet. Five years later, Fernandez is 24 and ranked around No. 28 in the live rankings, with six titles, nine finals and a career-high of No. 13 reached in August 2022. This is a review of what she has done, what she has not done, and what the numbers suggest about her ceiling.

Fernandez began the 2021 US Open unseeded and ranked 73rd. She had won one title in her career, in Monterrey in March, and had not won back-to-back matches since. In the first two rounds she beat two former top-20 players, Ana Konjuh and Kaia Kanepi, in tight straight-set matches: 7-6(3), 6-2 and 7-5, 7-5.

Then came the run that people remember. She beat Naomi Osaka, the defending champion and No. 3 in the world, 5-7, 7-6(2), 6-4 in the third round, and followed it with wins over Angelique Kerber, the No. 16 seed and a former US Open champion, 4-6, 7-6(5), 6-2, and Elina Svitolina, the world No. 5, 6-3, 3-6, 7-6(5).

The semifinal against Aryna Sabalenka, the No. 2 seed, was the most complete performance of the run: 7-6(3), 4-6, 6-4 in 2 hours and 20 minutes. Sabalenka hit 45 winners to her 26, but she also made 52 unforced errors against Fernandez's 23, and the Canadian saved 7 of 11 break points. She beat four seeds in a row, and her last four wins before the final all went to three sets.

Fernandez became the youngest player to defeat three top-five opponents at a Grand Slam since Serena Williams in 1999, and the second Canadian teenager in three years to reach the US Open final, following Bianca Andreescu in 2019. She ultimately lost to Emma Raducanu 6-4, 6-3, with much of the attention shifting to the British champion and her remarkable run to the title.

However, Fernandez’s campaign was impressive in its own right, and in some ways, falling short in the final may have helped ease the pressure on her in the years that followed. Her subsequent development has arguably been more balanced than Raducanu’s, with greater consistency, fewer physical setbacks and a sustained presence among the established names on tour. Fernandez has continued to compete at a high level, even if she is still searching for the breakthrough that would deliver another deep run — and potentially a title — at one of the sport’s biggest tournaments.

The first thing the numbers say is that the New York run was not an accident. Fernandez has now played nine singles finals and won six of them. She has won at least one title in five of the six seasons since 2021, with 2024 the only exception, and she has won her last three finals in a row: Washington and Osaka in 2025 and Singapore this year.

The second is how she wins them. Eight of the nine finals were on hard courts, where she is 6-2, and the one grass final, Eastbourne in 2024, was a loss to Daria Kasatkina. She is 3-1 in finals that went to three sets and 3-2 in finals that ended in straight sets. The third is the level: of her six titles, four are at WTA 250 and two at WTA 500, and none at WTA 1000 level. The list below is the complete record.

Outside singles, two other results complete the picture. In 2023 she reached the French Open doubles final with Taylor Townsend, and she led Canada to its first Billie Jean King Cup title, winning the decisive rubber and receiving the Heart Award. Her record in that competition is 16-4.

The Canadian had only one other deep run at a Grand Slam. It came at the 2022 French Open, where she enjoyed an impressive campaign that included victories over Belinda Bencic and Amanda Anisimova before losing to Italy’s Martina Trevisan in the quarter-finals. Fernandez suffered an injury during the match but fought through the pain and refused to retire, although Trevisan ultimately secured her place in the semi-finals.

Since then, Fernandez has failed to progress beyond the third round in her subsequent 17 Grand Slam appearances.

The 2026 season is where the argument for the specialist is easiest to make. She had a record of 17-23 when she arrived in Singapore, ranked No. 31, and the title there was her first of the year. She is now 26-25 for the season. Of those 26 wins, 15 have come at WTA 500 events, so a little more than half of her victories this year have come at that level. Fernandez leads the count, followed by Andreeva and Pegula on 14 each.

The 15 wins are spread across eight tournaments, from Abu Dhabi to Ningbo, and Singapore alone accounts for a third of them: five wins in five matches, including Mirra Andreeva in the quarterfinals and Maja Chwalińska in the semifinal, in a week in which she dropped just one set. It was her second Top 10 win of the year and her 11th overall. The table below shows where the rest of that consistency has taken her in 2026: five quarterfinals, four of them at 500 events.

Her three-hour win over Sasnovich in the second round at Ningbo is a good example of why the stat matters. She won 7-5, 6-7(3), 6-3 in 3 hours and 3 minutes after trailing 5-3 in the first set, and said afterwards she was "just enjoying the battle". It was her fifth quarterfinal of the season, and the 500 events are where she has gone deep most often.

The biggest question surrounding Fernandez remains her results at the Grand Slams. In 2026, she suffered first-round exits at the Australian Open and Wimbledon, losing to Janice Tjen at both tournaments, before falling to Alycia Parks in the opening round at Roland Garros.

She fared better at the US Open, where she reached the third round before losing to Jessica Pegula, but her run in Toronto ended in the round of 16 against Naomi Osaka. Her best result at a WTA 1000 event this season came in Madrid, where she reached the quarter-finals before losing to Mirra Andreeva.

Fernandez's two best Grand Slam results remain her run to the 2021 US Open final and her quarter-final appearance at Roland Garros in 2022. The latter ended in defeat to Martina Trevisan, with Fernandez suffering a foot fracture during the match that subsequently kept her out of Wimbledon. She has not reached another Grand Slam quarter-final since, making her results at the majors the clearest area where she has struggled to build on the breakthrough she made in New York.

That naturally raises questions about whether Fernandez has fulfilled the expectations created by her 2021 run. Beating three top-five players at a Grand Slam at just 19 inevitably led to predictions of a future top-10 career and a potential major champion. Neither milestone has materialised: Fernandez has yet to break into the top 10 or win a WTA 1000 title.

However, judging her entire career against the expectations generated by one extraordinary fortnight would be unfair. She has continued to win titles, compete at a high level and establish herself as a consistent presence on tour. The gap between what she achieved in 2021 and what she has accomplished since is real, but so is the progress she has made.

A return to the top 15 and more consistent runs at the biggest tournaments would represent a realistic next step for Fernandez. She reached a career-high ranking of No. 13 and finished 2025 at No. 22. She is projected to sit at No. 28 in the rankings after Ningbo, though she could climb even higher if she advances further in the competition. Getting back towards her best ranking will likely require her to turn the consistency she has shown at WTA 500 events into deeper runs at WTA 1000 tournaments and the Grand Slams.

There are signs that she can compete with the best. Fernandez has beaten Andreeva twice this season, in Toronto and Singapore, and also defeated Ekaterina Alexandrova in Wuhan. Those results demonstrate that she can trouble top opponents, even if she has yet to translate that ability into a major title at the highest level.

The WTA Finals field offers another useful benchmark. All eight qualified players have won either a Grand Slam or a WTA 1000 title this season, something Fernandez has yet to achieve. The distinction is not simply about how many trophies she has collected, but the level of tournaments in which she has won them. A first WTA 1000 title or another second-week appearance at a Grand Slam would be a significant step towards closing that gap.

Ultimately, whether Fernandez has lived up to the expectations created by her US Open run depends on the standard being applied. If the expectation was a top-10 ranking and a Grand Slam title, she has not reached those milestones. If it was to become a regular title contender, a key figure in Canadian tennis and a player capable of challenging the best on her day, she has made a convincing case.

At 24, she still has time to add the biggest achievements to her résumé. Her next match against Alexandrova on Friday offers another opportunity to show where she stands, even if the broader question will take more than one result to answer.