Bill ConnellyJan 5, 2026, 06:23 PM ETCloseBill Connelly is a writer for ESPN. He covers college football, soccer and tennis. He has been at ESPN since 2019.Follow on X
A lot can change in a year on the tennis tour. Around this time in 2024, Naomi Osaka was 57th in the world, still looking for traction following her return from maternity leave. Belinda Bencic was 487th, just getting started on her own comeback. Eighteen-year-old Victoria Mboko was 336th and only beginning to embark on a high-level professional pursuit. Now they’re 16th, 11th and 18th in the world, respectively. Amanda Anisimova jumped from 36th to fourth.
On the men’s side, Felix Auger-Aliassime rose from 29th to fifth. Teenagers Joao Fonseca and Learner Tien leapt from 145th and 122nd, respectively, to 24th and 28th. The names at the very top of the sport didn’t change all that much, but pretty much everything else did.
The 2026 ATP season will be defined by whether anyone can step up to challenge the rule of Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner. The two enter 2026 having compiled 23,550 rankings points over the past year, a higher point total than what players No. 3 through 7 earned combined. They met in three of four Slam finals in 2025, and they’ve combined to win eight consecutive Slam titles. We’ll see if anyone can put an end to this run, but two of the major candidates to do so are Americans.
Because of a frustrating foot injury, Paul played only five tour matches after Wimbledon, and despite reaching the first two Slam quarterfinals of the year, he finished outside the ATP top 15 for the first time since 2022. When he’s in top form, he’s capable of short-term, redlining brilliance — he took a 6-1 first set against Sinner in Rome in May before dropping the next two — and he has reached four Slam quarters and a semifinal. Can rest and rehab allow him to resume that level in 2026?
Maybe no American player faces a bigger 2026 than Big Foe. He finished outside of the ATP top 20 for the first time since 2021, he lost his last five matches of the year — leaving him just 26-23 for the season (with no top-10 wins) — and only a French Open quarterfinal appearance kept him in the top 30. Like many other players, he elected to shake up his coaching team for 2026. He’s still young enough to reestablish himself, but nothing is guaranteed.
In his first full season back on tour after a 13-month suspension for missed doping tests, Brooksby reestablished himself as a top-50-level player and scored wins over Felix Auger-Aliassime, Holger Rune, Tiafoe and Paul. He reached a tour final on both clay (he beat Tiafoe in Houston) and grass (lost to Fritz at Eastbourne), too. Does his enigmatic game have something higher than top-40 upside?
It almost seemed a year of stagnation for Michelsen, who finished 2024 at 41st in the world and managed to rise only a little bit further in 2025. Still, he scored a top-10 win over Lorenzo Musetti over the summer, and he checked boxes with his first fourth-round Slam appearance (Australian Open) and first 1000-level quarterfinal (Canadian Open). He’s a candidate to rise during the early-year hard-court run.
It has been slow but steady improvement from the former Virginia Cavalier, who rose to 38th in 2024, then 33rd in 2025. He has taken the Fritz route, slowly fixing his weaknesses and grinding out wins, but pure upside is a concern: He went just 3-4 in Slams and 0-12 in full matches against top-20 opponents in 2025.
The former NCAA champion has good size (6-foot-3) and a strong serve-and-forehand game, and he jumped from outside the top 200 into the top 75 this past year. He qualified for three Slams and won matches at the French Open and Wimbledon. The grind is just starting for the former Georgia Bulldog, but at 21, he has a lot of time to figure things out.
Anisimova was the story of the year in 2025, rising from 36th to fourth and reaching five finals, including Wimbledon and the US Open. Her extreme humanness was on display, both in the poise she showed in addressing the crowd after her 6-0, 6-0 loss to Swiatek in the Wimbledon final and in her revenge win over Swiatek in the US Open semis. Her backhand might be my favorite stroke in tennis, and her serve improved dramatically. She has everything she needs to sustain her 2025 breakthrough.
Pareja obviously has a long way to go, but she made her WTA debut in Bogota in May and immediately became the youngest tour-level semifinalist since Gauff. Her forehand and return game are already high level, and her serve has plenty of time to catch up. Obviously this is an aggressive ranking for a player with 11 career tour matches (and zero top-100 wins), but remember her name for the future.
After two years battling elbow issues, McNally, a two-time US Open finalist in doubles, took a strong step forward in 2025. After stockpiling points on the ITF circuit, she took the Newport title in July, beating grass-court specialist Tatjana Maria in the final, and she took Swiatek (at Wimbledon), Keys (Montreal) and Rybakina (Beijing) to three sets as well. It’s not too late for a breakthrough.
Almost no one in men’s tennis has done a better job of slowly shoring up his weaknesses and maxing out his game than the California-born Fritz, who is finishing his fourth straight year in the top 10 and second straight in the top six. He reached the 2024 US Open final and the 2025 Wimbledon semis, and he scored his first official win over Alcaraz at the Laver Cup in September. (He’s also 1-4 against Sinner.) His game might have peaked in 2024, but he has earned the right to lead this list for another year.
If any American can pass Fritz and challenge the Big 2, it’s the flamboyant Shelton, who enjoyed his first top-10 campaign in 2025 and reached his second-ever Slam semifinal in Australia to start the year. The big lefty with the big lefty serve has cleared a lot of hurdles, but the biggest one is still to come: He’s 0-3 all time against Alcaraz and has lost his past eight against Sinner. He’ll need a strong start in 2026 — he returned from a US Open shoulder injury in October but lost six of his last nine matches in 2025.
He’s only 5-foot-11, and his athleticism is average by tennis’ ridiculous standards. But no American — and really, almost no ATP player — enjoyed a more rousing 2025 than Tien, who went an incredible 5-3 against top-10 opponents, won the year-end Next Gen tournament and rose from 122nd to 28th in the ATP rankings. His game is based around depth, precision, adaptable tactics and an overwhelming level of “I belong here” confidence, and if he can upgrade his serve just a little bit, he has top-15 potential at worst.
Don’t be late — it’s time to board the Seb Korda bandwagon again! The 25-year-old has dealt with a number of injuries and false starts since his lone Slam quarterfinal appearance at the 2023 Australian Open. But after a first-round retirement at the US Open dropped him to 79th, he made the most of indoor season and charged back into the top 50 with a run to the Athens semifinals. If his body ever gives him a full year of runway — a massive “if” at this point — his technically brilliant game could carry him pretty far.
Somehow still only 21, Gauff has already put together a hall-of-fame résumé — two Slam titles, five Slam semifinals, 11 tour titles (including three 1000s and a WTA Finals win in 2024) — and she still hasn’t completely harnessed her entire game yet. She won the French Open and Wuhan titles in 2025 and won 75% of her matches despite double-faulting 10% of the time, easily the most of anyone in the WTA top 50. If she ever finds the service motion she’s looking for, then she rockets straight to Best in the World status.
After finally reaching a Slam final at the 2024 US Open, Pegula battled through a bumpy 2025, winning just five matches at her first three Slams. But she still rose from seventh at the end of 2024 to sixth thanks to six finals appearances, three titles, a US Open semifinal run (she was achingly close to beating Sabalenka, too) and late-year wins over Sabalenka (Wuhan) and Gauff (Riyadh). She has the ultimate high-floor game, and she reminded us late in 2025 that her upside is still awfully high, too.
CloseBill Connelly is a writer for ESPN. He covers college football, soccer and tennis. He has been at ESPN since 2019.Follow on X
Current ATP rank: 9 | Current Tennis Abstract rank: 5
Current ATP rank: 8 | Current Tennis Abstract rank: 12
Current ATP rank: 26 | Current Tennis Abstract rank: 13
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Current ATP rank: 46 | Current Tennis Abstract rank: 21
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Current ATP rank: 49 | Current Tennis Abstract rank: 42
Current ATP rank: 37 | Current Tennis Abstract rank: 66
Current ATP rank: 33 | Current Tennis Abstract rank: 44
Current ATP rank: 76 | Current Tennis Abstract rank: 78
Current WTA rank: 4 | Current Tennis Abstract rank: 4
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Current WTA rank: 35 | Current Tennis Abstract rank: 55
Current WTA rank: 7 | Current Tennis Abstract rank: 11
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Current WTA rank: 31 | Current Tennis Abstract rank: 29
Current WTA rank: 345 | Current Tennis Abstract rank: 212
Current WTA rank: 28 | Current Tennis Abstract rank: 53
Current WTA rank: 63 | Current Tennis Abstract rank: 60
Other potential breakthrough candidates: Ann Li (current WTA ranking: 37), Ashlyn Krueger (49), Hailey Baptiste (65), Peyton Stearns (50), Danielle Collins (62), Alycia Parks (101), Taylor Townsend (116), Clervie Ngounoue (192)