There are seasons where a player reinvents herself. Elise Mertens’ 2025 wasn’t that. It was something subtler: a 29-year-old tour ever-present proving she can still win singles titles, still bloody the big names, still collect the sport’s heaviest trophies in doubles — and still make seeds nervous every time her name appears in their section.
From No.34 to back inside the Top 20 in singles, and into the doubles Top 5 by November, the Belgian athlete stitched together one of the most balanced seasons of her career: WTA singles titles in Singapore and s’Hertogenbosch, and a Wimbledon and WTA Finals double with Veronika Kudermetova that reminded everyone why she’s a serial collector of big weeks.
Hobart, Melbourne, Singapore: Old-School Scheduling, Old-School Returns
The year opened in Hobart with a very Mertens week. She moved through the draw like a metronome: straight-sets wins over Nuria Párrizas Díaz and Renata Zarazua, then a wonderfully chaotic 6-3, 0-6, 6-2 over… Veronika Kudermetova. The dominance ratios told the story: all her wins sat above 1.1, her first-serve points won comfortably in the 69–78% range.
Against wild card Maya Joint in the semifinals she was all business — 6-2, 6-3, DR 1.33, 77.8% of first-serve points won — before the final against McCartney Kessler exposed the first crack. She split the opening two sets, then disappeared 6-0 in the third. The DR slumped to 0.77, her second-serve points went down at 32.4%. A solid week, soured by one bad set too many.
In Melbourne, Mertens did what she does at Slams: get through awkward early rounds and then run into the ceiling. She clawed past Viktorija Golubic 4-6, 7-6(8), 6-4, then fell 6-4, 6-2 to Jessica Pegula in a match where she held serve decently but never dictated.
Then Singapore arrived and quietly re-set the tone of her year. As the No.2 seed she dropped just one set all week, dismantling Taylor Townsend 6-1, 6-0 (DR 2.16), then beating Tatjana Maria, Camila Osorio and Xinyu Wang with the familiar mix of tidy patterns and dependable serving. In the final she handled Ann Li 6-1, 6-4, winning 75% of first serves and nearly 54% behind the second.
By the end of January, Mertens already had a singles title in the bag and a runner-up in Hobart — early proof that 2025 was shaping into one of her most balanced seasons on tour, with her singles form sharp enough to sit alongside the doubles ambitions that would define the summer.
Gulf & Sunshine: Beating the Pack, Bouncing Off the Ceiling
Doha and Dubai laid out her place in the food chain with brutal clarity. In Doha she blitzed Clara Tauson (6-0 before a retirement) and then beat Cristina Bucsa 6-2, 6-3 with a 1.84 DR, winning 77.4% of first-serve points and over 61% on the second. Against Ekaterina Alexandrova in the last sixteen, the numbers flipped. She won only half of her second-serve points, saved just 1 of 5 break points, and lost 6-4, 6-2 with the DR down at 0.64.
Dubai was a similar story. She picked apart Leylah Fernandez 6-2, 6-2 — 1.67 DR, nearly 76% of first-serve points won, 100% of break points saved — and then walked into a 6-2, 6-1 beating from Paula Badosa, her second-serve win rate plunging to 16.7%.
Indian Wells and Miami were rich in effort, thin in reward. She edged Kimberly Birrell and Peyton Stearns with typically efficient baseline play, but lost in three to Madison Keys and straight to Iga Swiatek. Against Swiatek she held 55.7% first serves in and reached a first-set tiebreak, but took just 35.5% of points behind the second serve and converted one of six break points. Against the very top, the margins stayed unforgiving.
Clay: Craft, One Big Win, and a Paris Gut Punch
Clay has always suited Mertens’ balance and court sense, and early results reinforced that. In Charleston she beat Varvara Gracheva 6-3, 7-5 (DR 1.27) before Qinwen Zheng pushed her out in three.
Stuttgart produced one of her cleaner weeks. She beat Aliaksandra Sasnovich 7-6, 6-2, then posted a statement win over Diana Shnaider: 6-2, 7-6 with a 1.32 DR, 75.7% of first-serve points won and solid numbers behind the second. Aryna Sabalenka stopped her 6-4, 6-1 in the quarters, as the raw power gap reappeared.
Madrid was copy-paste: good win over Camila Osorio, competitive three-set loss to Sabalenka after winning the first set and then watching first-serve efficiency sag to 39.5%.
Rome, though, delivered one of her best wins of 2025. After scrapping past Suzan Lamens in three, Mertens upset Jessica Pegula 7-5, 6-1 with a 1.41 dominance ratio, 68.6% of first-serve points won, and a huge 64.7% behind the second serve. She saved 7 of 8 break points and turned a tight opening set into a one-way second. Shnaider paid her back in the last 16, hitting through her 6-2, 6-3 and exposing once again the limits of a serve that is reliable rather than lethal.
Roland Garros was the gut punch. Drawn against French wild card Lois Boisson, ranked outside the Top 300, Mertens lost 6-4, 4-6, 6-3 despite winning 75% of points behind the first serve and 54.5% on the second. The problem was volume: only 45% of first serves made it in, and she couldn’t control the match from neutral. The dominance ratio (0.94) says it was close; the opponent’s ranking says it should never have been that close.
Grass: Where Her Game Still Shines – Singles and Doubles
If you want the purest version of Elise Mertens the competitor, you still look at grass.
In s’Hertogenbosch, she quietly put together one of the most impressive runs of any 250 champion in 2025. She beat Viktoriya Tomova, then crushed Maria Sakkari 6-3, 6-0 with a 1.59 DR, and calmly handled Yue Yuan 6-0, 6-4 with 80.8% of first-serve points won. In the semis she toughed out Ekaterina Alexandrova in three (2-6, 7-6(7), 6-4), saving 16 of 21 break points and winning 57.4% of points behind her second serve — the sort of resourcefulness that doesn’t trend on social media but does win tournaments.
She finished the job in the final, beating Elena-Gabriela Ruse 6-3, 7-6(4) with 71.6% of first serves in and a 1.17 DR. Thus, alongside her earlier Singapore crown, Mertens could already claim two singles titles by mid-June — the spine of a campaign that was as balanced as anything she’d produced.
And 2025 on grass wasn’t just about singles. In doubles, she partnered Veronika Kudermetova to capture the Wimbledon Championships, earning her fifth Grand Slam doubles crown and second at the All England Club. It was the kind of achievement that underlined why, even as younger names crash into the singles draw, Mertens remains one of the most reliable champions when there’s a second name on the scoreboard.
Her singles Wimbledon run matched the doubles stagecraft. She beat Linda Fruhvirtová and Ann Li, then out-thought Elina Svitolina 6-1, 7-6(4) in the third round with a 1.34 dominance ratio, saving 5 of 6 break points. Sabalenka ended her singles campaign in the last sixteen, 6-4, 7-6(4), but even in defeat Mertens posted over 63% first serves in and more than 67% of points won behind them. Against the very best, she still makes you earn everything.
North American Summer and Asia: Edges, Regrets, and a Doubles Flourish
After Wimbledon the singles results flattened. In Montreal she led Anna Kalinskaya 6-1 in the first set before losing 1-6, 7-6(4), 6-2, the dominance ratio still oddly positive at 1.09 but the match drifting away on missed chances. Cincinnati brought another recovery act — a three-hour escape against Clervie Ngounoue — followed by a three-set loss to Elena Rybakina, where she won 76% of first-serve points but bled too much behind the second.
Monterrey briefly revived the momentum: clean straight-sets wins over Anna Blinkova and Donna Vekic with DRs above 1.3, before a two-tiebreak loss to Shnaider that could have been a signature win on another day.
At the US Open, Mertens did what she does best in week one: she handled a young wild card, Alyssa Ahn, 6-1, 6-0 with a staggering 93.8% of first-serve points won (DR 3.16), then moved past Lulu Sun 6-2, 6-3. Cristina Bucsa stopped the run in the third round, turning a 6-3 deficit into a 3-6, 7-5, 6-3 win. Mertens still won over 70% of first-serve points but just 42.5% on the second; the pattern was familiar.
Guadalajara, Beijing, Wuhan and Osaka added miles more than points: a three-set loss to Elsa Jacquemot, another defeat to Kessler (the Hobart ghost returning), a promising win over Bucsa in Osaka followed by a flat loss to Tereza Valentová. By October, the singles tank was clearly running close to fumes.
But even as the singles graph zig-zagged slowly upward, the doubles line kept climbing. After Wimbledon, Mertens and Kudermetova capped their partnership by winning the WTA Finals in Shenzhen — their second year-end championship together. Those victories pushed Mertens back into the doubles Top 5 by November and lifted her career doubles title total to 23, a number that quietly places her among the most decorated active players on tour.
Elise Mertens Assessment
On the singles side, Mertens’ 2025 looks exactly like the year of an elite benchmark player:
- Two singles titles (Singapore and s’Hertogenbosch)
- A Hobart final, a Rome last 16 with a win over Pegula, and a fourth-round run at Wimbledon
- Quality wins over names like Pegula, Svitolina, Sakkari, Alexandrova, Shnaider, Fernandez and Vekic
- A ranking climb from the mid-30s back towards the Top 20
Statistically, the core is stable:
- First-serve percentage usually in the 55–65% band
- First-serve points won consistently strong, especially on grass, often in the 70–80% range in winning weeks
- Dominance ratios in victories frequently between 1.3 and 1.6, with occasional destructive outings above 2.0 against lower-ranked opposition
The weaknesses are just as familiar:
- Slam underperformance outside Wimbledon: early exit at Roland Garros, third-round ceiling in New York, and no deep punch in Melbourne
- A second serve that does a job but rarely flips matches under pressure, with too many decisive sets featuring sub-45% win rates behind it
- A handful of damaging losses (Boisson in Paris, Bucsa in New York, Kessler twice) that left ranking points and narratives on the table
Layered on top of this is the doubles résumé, which upgraded from quietly impressive to outright formidable in 2025. A Wimbledon title and WTA Finals trophy with Kudermetova, a return to the doubles Top 5, and a 23-title career haul put Mertens in a category where the conversation is less about “underrated” and more about “under-celebrated.”
Final Verdict: B+
Elise Mertens’ 2025 earns a clear B+: two singles titles, a strong grass campaign, a marquee win over Pegula in Rome, plus Wimbledon and WTA Finals trophies in doubles that cement her as one of the era’s great partnerships players.
GPA: 3.4
The grade stops short of an A because of the Slam disappointments, the sporadic upsets, and the familiar ceiling against the very biggest hitters. But as a body of work, it’s one of her most balanced seasons yet — the year of a consummate professional who can still win tournaments on her own and still, when she has a partner at her side, walk away with the sport’s heaviest silverware.
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