Another year of Grand Slam tennis has come and gone, and it was certainly a memorable one for both the men and women. The 2025 Slam season concluded on Sep. 7 with the U.S. Open Men’s Singles Championship, which Spaniard Carlos Alcaraz won, defeating Italian Jannik Sinner 6-2, 3-6, 6-1, 6-4. The day before, Belarusian Aryna Sabalenka defeated American Amanda Anisimova 6-3, 7(7)-6(3) to claim the women’s singles title.
You could say that these two winners are not a surprise, but as there always is at a Grand Slam, there was a lot to watch along the way. The women’s side saw Anisimova return to the next Slam final after losing the 2025 Wimbledon final 6-0, 6-0 to Pole Iga Świątek. Her appearance in Saturday’s final meant that an American woman appeared at every Slam final this year, with Madison Keys and Coco Gauff winning the Australian Open and French Open, respectively. Americans always receive the most support of them all at the finale of the Slams in New York, and the Arthur Ashe Stadium crowd rallied behind Anisimova in an enticing final match. And although she came up short, it will be great for American fans to watch her young career develop. Anisimova wasn’t the only American woman to go far into the tournament. The round of 16 featured five American women overall: Anisimova, Gauff, 2024 runner-up Jessica Pegula, Taylor Townsend and Ann Li.
Alongside a great showing by Americans, there was another standout on the women’s side: Japan’s Naomi Osaka. Osaka, a four-time Slam champion (twice at the U.S. Open), lost in the semifinals to Anisimova, but her loss does not reflect a failed tournament. Osaka has endured ups-and-downs in recent seasons, taking several months away from the sport in 2021 due to mental health reasons and struggling to make noise in tournaments since. To see her return to the final four of one of her best Slams is uplifting for her fans and sends a hopeful message that she might be able to reach the peak once again in the near future. As for the champion Sabalenka, she claimed her second U.S. Open title and fourth Slam overall, and will end the year protecting her ranking of world number one. Her dominance in Slams has become clear as she continues to be one of, if not the most, difficult woman’s player to beat on the tour.
Turning over to the men’s side, tennis fans were treated to yet another “Sincaraz” matchup in a Slam final. Sinner or Alcaraz have been featured in every single Slam final since the 2023 U.S. Open, with three straight finale matchups for the last three majors of the 2025 season. While it will be difficult to ever replicate the thrilling 2025 French Open final between the two, which lasted five hours and 29 minutes and had Alcaraz save three championship points, any men’s tennis fan salivates at the idea of another edition of the Alcaraz-Sinner saga.
The one in Queens on Sep. 7 was much shorter and much less dramatic, as Alcaraz defeated Sinner in four sets to claim his sixth major title and second at the U.S. Open, and to reclaim his spot as world number one. Canadian Felix Auger-Aliassime and Serbian great Novak Djokovic were runners up to Sinner and Alcaraz, respectively, in Friday’s semifinals. Auger-Aliassime would return to his final Slam semifinal in four years, upsetting world number three, Germany’s Alexander Zverev, along the way. Djokovic, of course, seems inevitable to the world of tennis. He turned 38 years old in May, but is still trucking along as ever, making the semifinals in all four major tournaments this season. While it certainly does seems odd to not have seen Djokovic in a major final this year, it cannot be overlooked how incredibly impressive his strong performances are as he nears 40.
There are still multiple smaller tennis events to play before the conclusion of the calendar year, but for now, many tennis fans will put their souvenir Honey Deuce cups in the back of their cabinets and patiently wait for the return of Grand Slam tennis with the Australian Open in Melbourne beginning on Jan. 12, 2026.
