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In January, Aryna Sabalenka was asked to take her WHOOP band off before her first round match at the Australian Open. Seven months later, WHOOP has built her one of her own.
The custom band launched this week ahead of the US Open, and it carries the tiger stripes Sabalenka has made her signature, echoing the roaring tiger tattooed on her forearm. The pattern runs across a tan and black SuperKnit weave and is engraved into the gold-tone clasp, which is finished with the WHOOP logo. It’s easily the loudest thing in a range that otherwise sells in onyx and flat single colours.
The timing is the part worth paying attention to. The world No. 1 spent the opening weeks of 2026 arguing in public that players should be allowed to track their own health data during Grand Slam matches. By April, she had largely won that argument.
A signature strap is a small thing on its own. What makes this one land is that it arrives at the first US Open where Sabalenka can reasonably expect to keep it on.
The Aryna Sabalenka Custom WHOOP Band
The strap is a tan and black SuperKnit weave printed with a tiger stripe, and WHOOP has carried the same stripe through to the hardware rather than stopping at the fabric. The clasp is gold-toned and etched with the pattern, with a brushed plate carrying the WHOOP logo. The brand calls the design fierce and expressive, built to stand out on and off the court. That’s a fair reading of it: this is a piece of jewellery that happens to hold a sensor. The launch runs alongside new WHOOP social content built on the idea that only Aryna truly knows Aryna, a neater way of making the company’s usual argument that the numbers on your wrist are yours to read.
- Design: Tiger-stripe print on a tan and black SuperKnit strap
- Hardware: Gold-tone clasp engraved with a matching tiger stripe
- Athlete: Aryna Sabalenka, world No. 1 and back-to-back US Open champion in 2024 and 2025
- Launched: August 2026, ahead of a US Open main draw that starts 30 August
- Works with: The WHOOP sensor that comes with a WHOOP membership
Why Sabalenka Couldn’t Wear a WHOOP at the Australian Open
The bands are approved by the International Tennis Federation under its Player Analysis Technology rules, and the WTA and ATP have allowed them at tour events for years. Grand Slams are run independently of the tours, though, and at the start of 2026 they hadn’t reached the same conclusion. Carlos Alcaraz, Jannik Sinner and Sabalenka were all told to remove their bands at Melbourne Park, which we covered at the time.
Sabalenka was the loudest voice about it. She said she’d gone on court believing the device was cleared, having seen an email confirming ITF approval, and that she couldn’t understand why the majors were treating it differently to every other tournament she plays. Her point was that the band tracks her health rather than feeding her instructions. The ITF agrees: WHOOP models are approved for in-match wear with haptic feedback switched off.
That changed over the northern summer. Roland-Garros became the first major to permit wearables during matches, and Front Office Sports reported in April 2026 that Wimbledon and USTA spokespeople had confirmed the trial would continue through Wimbledon and the US Open. If it holds, the band WHOOP has just designed for Sabalenka is one she can actually wear while defending her title.
What a WHOOP Membership Actually Gets You
Worth being clear on what you’re buying, because WHOOP doesn’t sell it the way most wearable brands do. The band is a strap, not the device. The sensor is bundled into the membership rather than sold separately, so the yearly price you see is the whole cost and the hardware arrives with it. Straps like Sabalenka’s are the accessory layer on top.
What the sensor tracks is the same across the range: heart rate, strain, sleep, recovery and skin temperature, analysed after the fact rather than fed to you mid-effort. The tiers differ in the longevity and health tooling stacked on that baseline. We broke the current tiers down in our guide to WHOOP Peak membership, the middle option and the one most people land on.
If you’re weighing it against a smartwatch, the screenless format is the whole argument. No display to check, nothing to notify you, and that’s why it survives on a tennis player’s wrist where an Apple Watch wouldn’t. It’s also why the Grand Slam rules argument was ever winnable: the band has no way to tell a player anything during a point.
WHOOP and Aryna Sabalenka FAQs
Grand Slams set their own rules independently of the ATP and WTA tours. Roland-Garros became the first major to permit wearables during matches in 2026, and Front Office Sports reported in April 2026 that Wimbledon and USTA spokespeople confirmed the trial would continue through Wimbledon and the US Open. WHOOP devices are approved by the ITF for in-match wear with haptic feedback turned off.
It’s a custom WHOOP strap designed with Sabalenka and launched in August 2026 ahead of the US Open. The strap is a tan and black SuperKnit weave printed with a tiger stripe, matched by a gold-tone clasp engraved with the same pattern, referencing the tiger tattoo on her forearm.
At the 2026 Australian Open, Grand Slams didn’t permit personal biometric wearables during matches, even though the ITF approves WHOOP under its Player Analysis Technology rules and the WTA and ATP allow them at tour events. Sabalenka, Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner were all asked to take theirs off.
Yes. A WHOOP band is a strap rather than a device. The sensor is bundled into a WHOOP membership rather than sold on its own, so the membership is what you buy and the hardware comes with it.
Signature athlete kit usually asks you to care about the athlete more than the product. This one’s a rare case where the story around it is the more interesting half: a world No. 1 spent a season arguing that her own health data was hers to read, the majors moved, and the band showed up in time for the tournament she’s won twice. The stripes are a bonus. If you want the data underneath them, WHOOP sells it by the year.
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