Teenage champions on the women’s tour are nothing new, but not many have a game as distinct as Lilli Tagger.
The Austrian rising star, already the youngest player in the top 100, has soared to a career-high ranking of world No.45 after breaking through for her first WTA title in Prague.
She’s the first woman representing Austria to crack the top 50 in more than a decade.
Less than a year ago, the 18-year-old was ranked outside the top 500.
Tagger cut a swathe through the Prague draw, athletic and imposing at 185cm tall. She dropped just one set thanks to the relentless heaviness and depth of her groundstrokes and magnificent one-handed backhand.
“When I at this age, I didn’t knew how difficult it maybe can be or could be,” Tagger said of switching to a one-handed backhand at age 12. “But I had so much fun to play it.
“There was never once where I thought about it could be the wrong choice.”
It was a shot lighting up social media as Tagger unfurled winners from that wing throughout her breakthrough campaign in the Czech capital.
“What a week,” Tagger said as she turned to her team, which includes high-profile coach Francesca Schiavone, a former top-five star. “We’re doing amazing work, we’re working very, very hard, so thank you for helping me every day to achieve my goals.”
Tagger claimed the trophy with a 7-5 6-2 win in the final over Daria Snigur, after trailing 5-2 in the first set.
Yet it was arguably her semifinal victory, from 3-1 down in a final-set tiebreak, against two-time major champion Barbora Krejcikova which caused a bigger ripple.
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Krejcikova had recently reached the second week at Wimbledon then won the WTA title in Athens, riding an eight-match winning streak which Tagger snapped – for just her second win over a top-30 player – after a near three-hour battle.
“Crazy. Honestly right now I really can’t believe that I won the match,” said Tagger after scoring just the second top-30 win of her career. “It was an incredible fight. She’s played amazing tennis. I watched her three weeks, four weeks ago in Wimbledon.
“Not very easy [playing against the Czech crowd]. But to be honest it’s very nice to play in those amazing stadiums with a lot of people.”
Tagger’s rise has been meteoric since she ended 2024 with a WTA ranking of No.977. Twelve months later she’d improved that to world No.153, despite playing a limited schedule as she also competed on the junior tour.
The highlight there was winning the Roland Garros girls’ singles title in 2025, further connecting her with Schiavone given it was at the site of the Italian’s Grand Slam breakthrough in 2010.
A few weeks later, Tagger left juniors behind after her quarterfinal run in the Wimbledon girls’ singles event, focusing on professional events. She reached two W75 finals on the ITF Circuit then her first WTA final at the Jiangxi Open in China, falling to Anna Blinkova.
Incredibly, that tournament marked her tour-level debut.
She carried that momentum into 2026, coming within a match of qualifying for the Australian Open, winning rounds at Indian Wells and Miami, and reaching the quarterfinals on home soil at the WTA event in Linz.
Suddenly she was inside the top 100 and accruing invaluable experience with each passing week.
There was her Grand Slam main-draw debut at Roland Garros – where she came ever-so-close to upsetting 32nd seed Wang Xinyu – and another main-draw appearance at Wimbledon, where she also fell in three sets in the first round.
Tagger is learning to balance the conflicting emotions that come with each milestone.
She currently occupies a space where she competes with nothing to lose, yet also as a highly-rated prospect who expects a lot from herself.
“I think I went on the court maybe a bit tight, you know, first time playing here [in the main draw],” Tagger said after falling 6-3 3-6 6-4 to Wang in Paris. “Of course, there were a few emotions. Maybe I didn’t, let’s say, let my play go a bit. I wanted to control it too much.
“But in the second set I found a good way. In the third one I had my chances. Didn’t use them, but I think there are still a lot of things to learn, but I can be happy.”
Now a top-50 player, new competitive opportunities should open up for Tagger, who is currently next scheduled to compete at a WTA 125 event in Warsaw in early August.
Having acquitted herself well against top-50 and top-100 opponents, the teenager has faced a top-20 player just once – the next frontier as she continues her ascent in the women’s game.
Expect that to change in the coming months.
“I mean, for now I’m enjoying it a lot. It’s the life of everyone to live,” Tagger said of adjusting to bigger tournaments and a bigger spotlight. “Of course, maybe yeah, there is the pressure.
“I think you need to remember every day that at the end you’re playing for yourself because you enjoy it. You learn how to deal with it, for sure.”