Britain’s Harriet Dart won the first WTA Tour singles title of her career by beating Austrian teenager Lilli Tagger in the final of the Guangzhou Open. Dart, 30, was overcome with emotion after a 4-6, 6-3, 6-4 victory in a tense final. to 4-3 and held serve to get within one game of the title. Dart held onto two championship points on serve from 53rd-ranked Tagger in the ninth game (hitting a tantalizing mid-court ball into the net in the second), but rallied to seal the victory in the biggest match of his career. He earned his third championship point with a service winner, falling to the court in joy before celebrating with his team. The brave victory capped an impressive career for Dart, who surged through qualifying to reach his first tour level. final at the WTA 250 event. In addition to taking home the trophy, Dart will be rewarded for the best week of her career by returning to the top 100 in the world. This means he will go straight to the Australian Open main draw when the season-opening Grand Slam takes place in January. The hallmark of Dart’s success this week has been his resilience and ability to recover from lost positions. Battling the 2025 French Open junior champion, Tagger was the fourth time in seven matches he won after losing the first set. The title is great reward for an excellent second half of the season, in which Dart hit the ball consistently well and continued to grow in confidence. Dart reached a career-high No. 70 in the world in 2024, having reached the third round of Wimbledon and the second round of the US Open, but has been languishing outside the top 100 for most of the past two seasons. Working with former Wimbledon champion Marion Bartoli has been a major factor in Dart’s resurgence. Dart has won 19 of her 24 tour-level matches on hard courts since Wimbledon, raising her overall record on the WTA Tour this season to 23 wins in 34 matches, the highest winning percentage of her career. final, he told Dart.
