Here's a strange fact about the 2026 tennis season: through two Grand Slams, neither of the WTA's top three players has won anything. Elena Rybakina won the Australian Open. Mirra Andreeva, a 19-year-old playing in her first major final, won the French Open. Aryna Sabalenka, Iga Swiatek, and Coco Gauff, the three names everyone expects to see in a final, have combined for zero titles so far.
And yet, on Kalshi's market asking "Who will win a WTA Grand Slam this year?", those same three names sit at the top.
Sabalenka leads, Swiatek is close behind, and Gauff isn't far off either. With Wimbledon starting June 29 and the US Open following on August 30, traders clearly think the year's two remaining majors will look a lot more familiar than the first two did.
Sabalenka Has the Best Recent Track Record at the Remaining Slams
Start with the obvious case: Sabalenka has won the last two US Opens in a row, beating Jessica Pegula in 2024 and Amanda Anisimova in 2025. That made her the first woman to win back-to-back titles at Flushing Meadows since Serena Williams a decade earlier. Hard courts are clearly her best surface, and the US Open is the last major of the season.
The catch is her form so far in 2026. While she made the final at the Australian Open, losing to Rybakina, her clay campaign in Paris ended well short of the trophy, leaving her empty-handed in majors so far this year. It’s a frustrating echo of early 2025, when she also dropped the first two Slam finals of the season before turning things around in New York.
Swiatek Defends Wimbledon, but Her Clay Game Just Fell Apart
Swiatek walks into Wimbledon as the defending champion, having won her first title on grass last year in a 6-0, 6-0 final that took less than an hour. That result also completed something rare: she's the only active woman to have won majors on hard courts, clay, and grass — but the buildup to Wimbledon hasn't gone smoothly.
At Roland Garros, her best surface for years, with four titles there, she lost in the fourth round to Marta Kostyuk on her own birthday, her earliest exit from the French Open since 2019.
Defending a Wimbledon title while coming off the worst loss of her season at the place where she's usually unbeatable is exactly the kind of contradiction that makes traders unsure what to expect from her this July.
Gauff's Best Slam Is the One She Just Lost Early
Gauff arrived at Roland Garros as the defending champion after beating Sabalenka in last year's final, but lost in the third round this time around.
Her Wimbledon history makes a quick turnaround look unlikely as she's never gotten past the fourth round there — last year she lost in the very first round to a player ranked outside the top 40.
The US Open is a different story for the American. She won it in 2023, beating Sabalenka in the final, and hard courts generally suit her game far better than grass does
Two first-time champions already crashed the party this year. Whether the established names finally show up at Wimbledon or the US Open, or whether 2026 keeps producing new winners, is exactly what traders are thinking right now.
