Iga Swiatek escapes Danielle Collins and all of 2024's best WTA Grand Slam matches

The 2024 tennis season was filled with noteworthy stories, breakthrough moments, and countless trophy lifts. But what were the best matches of the year that was?

We rolled the tape, and this week, TENNIS.com is counting down some of the best WTA matches of the past year (with our ATP picks to come next week). Our countdown continues with the best Grand Slam matches of the season, and will conclude Friday with our overall Top 5 matches of the year. But who else stood out the most on the major stage?

5. Iga Swiatek def. Danielle Collins, Australian Open R2

Danielle Collins and Iga Swiatek were two of the major players of the 2024 tennis season, and set the tone for the year's story when they played in the second round in Melbourne.

The American had a "feast-or-famine" history with Swiatek previously, famously routing her in the Australian Open semifinals just two years prior, and the 6-4, 3-6, 6-4 win for Swiatek was both, all in one package. Swiatek trailed 4-1 in the final set, and 0-40 at serving down 4-3, before winning five consecutive games to cap off a stunning comeback.

"Oh my god, I was at the airport already," Swiatek later joked in her on-court interview.

"I wanted to fight until the end," she added. "I knew she played just perfectly but it would be hard for anybody to keep that level, so I wanted to be ready when more mistakes would come from the other side and I wanted to push then. I did that at the end and I'm really proud of myself. It wasn't easy."

We all know what came next. After the match, Collins stunned the tennis world by announcing that 2024 would be her last season, only to eventually reverse that course before year's end and postpone her retirement. Swiatek was upset in the next round by young Linda Noskova, but she and Collins would dance twice more in 2024, including in a dramatic quarterfinal at the Olympics where the action continued into the post-match press room.

4. Beatriz Haddad Maia def. Caroline Wozniacki, US Open R4

While Beatriz Haddad Maia's run to the US Open quarterfinals was marred by third-round, VAR-induced controversy, the Brazilian's fourth-round win over two-time tournament finalist Caroline Wozniacki was about nothing but guts and guile.

In a grueling two hours and 41 minutes, the left-hander hammered 40 winners to finally wear down the former world No. 1's defenses inside Louis Armstrong Stadium and make recent history for her country, matching the 1968 achievement of the legendary Maria Bueno.

“It’s very special to hear that, I did not know that before the match,” a visibly emotional Haddad Maia said in her on-court interview. But later, Haddad Maia revealed that joining the late great as a member of the exclusive club wasn't the only reason why she was overcome in the moment.

In her post-match press conference, Haddad Maia revealed to reporters that her physiotherapist Paulo Cerutti’s baby son had passed away in Brazil. Cerutti hadn't traveled with Haddad Maia to North America for the summer hard-court season, as he and his wife were expecting twins. One of the babies survived, but the other did not.

"It's a tough moment for me, but I still find strength to be happy with my victory," she continued. "The only thought I have right now is to fight until the end and try to give my all on the court for him."

Though she lost in straight sets to Karolina Muchova in the last eight, Haddad Maia kept her momentum into the fall swing, which was highlighted by a title in Seoul.

3. Barbora Krejcikova def. Jasmine Paolini, Wimbledon F

While it wasn't the Wimbledon final anyone would've predicted at the start of the SW19 fortnight, Barbora Krejcikova and Jasmine Paolini authored the only three-set, women's Grand Slam final of the season on the British lawns.

The two unlikely finalists had only met once previously, in qualifying for the 2018 Australian Open when neither was a Top 100 player. How far they had both come since then—Krejcikova, a doubles talent who finally tapped into singles success with her run to the 2021 Roland Garros crown, and Paolini's rocket rise throughout 2024—made for an intriguing pre-championship narrative, as did the personal pressures on both players' shoulders.

Paolini had hoped for a better accounting of herself than she had a month prior in the final of Roland Garros, where she was Iga Swiatek's latest Parisian conquest in a 6-2, 6-1 rout. Krejcikova, meanwhile, hoped to match the achievement of her late mentor, Jana Novotna, by also winning the singles title at SW19, and the Czech struggled to keep her emotions in check with every mention of the Hall of Famer.

But, she did, as Steve Tignor wrote in the aftermath of Krejcikova's 6-2, 2-6, 6-4 win for a second major, keep them in check long enough to ultimately be "one serve, and one forehand" too good in the tension-filled affair.

Read more: For Jasmine Paolini, Barbora Krejcikova was one forehand and one serve too good in the Wimbledon final

“It’s unbelievable what just happened," a stunned Krejcikova, who returned to the Top 10 and ended the season there, with the win. "The best day of my tennis career—and the best day of my life."

2. Zheng Qinwen def. Donna Vekic, US Open R4

Donna Vekic and Zheng Qinwen made history for their respective nations when they faced off in the gold-medal match, won by Zheng, as no woman from either China or Croatia had ever featured on the singles podium at the Olympic Games.

But when they met nearly two months later at the US Open, they added another chapter to the sport's all-time annals. A longer, and tougher, test on the Croat's favored hard courts still ended with Zheng as the winner, but it ended up being the latest women's finish in US Open history.

The previous latest finish for a women’s match was 2:13 a.m., when Maria Sakkari beat Bianca Andreescu in a 2021 fourth-round match.

The first break of serve didn't come until early in the second set, and it was earned by Vekic. The Croat, in fact, ended the nearly three-hour thriller with one more winner than Zheng, and her flat strikes on the surface earned the Chinese No. 1's praise.

But she couldn't muster enough against Zheng's serve on the whole for a return trip to the US Open quarterfinals. Instead, Zheng reached the last eight for the second year in a row, where she was again stopped by her own nemesis, Aryna Sabalenka.

1. Aryna Sabalenka def. Emma Navarro, US Open SF

While some might find it odd that a two-set match landed at the top of this list, the performance that Sabalenka and Emma Navarro put on under the lights inside Arthur Ashe Stadium was worthy of pole position.

The third overall meeting between the two in 2024 came after Navarro announced herself officially by topping Sabalenka in Indian Wells, before the world No. 2 got her revenge by beating the American in two comfortable sets in the last 16 at Roland Garros.

Navarro's win over Sabalenka in the desert, she said, gave this "chill" athlete the confidence that she could match the intesity of the world's best, and she showed that in New York. She upset defending champion Coco Gauff in the fourth round, and followed that up with a win against Paula Badosa in which she rallied from 5-1 down in the third set.

Meanwhile, Sabalenka was vocal about her desire to complete the unfinished business she felt she had in New York, having lost the prior year's final to Gauff from a set ahead. Her first-strike tennis, couple with Navarro's counter-punching ability, in which Sabalenka came from 5-3 down in the second set to seal things in two.

The experience of losing to Gauff the prior year, where the American played as a doubles team against Sabalenka with the partisan New York crowd, helped her quiet things down in her own mind as the Ashe faithful tried to will Navarro back into the contest.

Read more: Aryna Sabalenka quiets the noise, solves US Open crowd to make finals return

“Today in the match, I was, like, ‘No, no, no, Aryna, it's not going to happen again,’” she said in her post-match press conference. “You have to control your emotions. You have to focus on yourself."

Sabalenka repeated the second-set comeback feat in the final against Jessica Pegula, completing a redemption arc now sealed forever in tennis' history books.