The new sensation of women’s tennis: she is 18 years old, she is outside the Top 100 and she made her first hits at the WTA in Linz
In it Linz WTA 500far from the flashes of the most important tournaments, a young promise of women’s tennis made her explosion. The new sensation is called Lilli Taggerwho is only 18 years old, is outside the Top 100 and has already made his first hits in the most important competition in his native Austria.
Originally from Lienz, in the Austrian Tyrol area, Tagger starred in the great week of, until now, his budding career. In a period of two days, whoever entered as wildcard She defeated the former Top 10, Paula Badosa, and the Russian Liudmila Samsonova, one of the best 30 tennis players in the world in recent times and winner of five WTA titles. Two icing on the cake that undoubtedly enhance his qualification to the quarterfinals of the event in which he is participating.
Despite being outside the Top 100 (today No. 117), these latest results gave her the greatest prize: placing among the best in the world. In the live ranking, he is ranked No. 97 and can continue climbing depending on what he continues to do in Linz. But the great reward, without a doubt, has already been obtained. Starting next week she will be one of the three Under-18s in this batch, along with Mirra Andreeva and Iva Jovic.
2 years ago, Tagger She made her debut as a professional player on the ITF circuit and won the tournament in Viserba (Italy), where she won a curious prize of only 340 euros. In that country, she trained as a tennis player since her coach is the historic Francesca Schiavone, who was Roland Garros champion in the 2010 season. “The WTA circuit needs players like her, so intelligent and talented in tennis” were the words of the azzurra about his pupil, who sees her with very good eyes for the future.
At the junior level, the Austrian was the French Open champion in 2025 without losing sets. In addition, he also made the quarterfinals at Wimbledon and the Australian Open. His worst performance was at the US Open, where he did not make it past the first round. However, his performances are very remarkable considering that he only played five Grand Slams in the last two years.
His path of Tagger in it Linz WTA 500 It will continue in the quarterfinals, when she faces the Russian nationalized Austrian, Anastasia Potapova (No. 97). If she wins, it would be her first WTA semifinal. On their side of the draw, there are also Karolina Pliskova and Donna Vekic, potential rivals in the semis. In the upper area of the main draw Mirra Andreeva vs. Sorana Cirstea and Jelena Ostapenko vs. Elena-Gabriela Ruse.
