Danish teenager Clara Tauson on Sunday clinched her first career WTA Tour title in style, beating Viktorija Golubic 6-4, 6-1 to win the Open 6eme Sens Metropole de Lyon without dropping a set after coming through two qualifying rounds.
As an added bonus, the world No. 139 yesterday broke into the top 100.
“I’m going to believe it when I see it,” Tauson said after her win. “When I play like this I think I can beat some really good players. I’ve worked so hard for this. When I came here I was a qualifier, I didn’t expect this of course.”
Photo: AFP / Alexandre Hergott / WTA
Feeling tense before the final, she called her father.
“He’s at home in Denmark. I spoke with him before the match to calm my nerves,” Tauson said. “It’s been a weird week. I still haven’t processed it.”
The match between the two qualifiers was even until Tauson reeled off six straight games after Golubic had broken back to trail 5-4 when Tauson served for the first set.
The 18-year-old Dane broke straight back to take it and was 5-0 up in the second when her Swiss opponent finally won another game.
“I think I played aggressive, I played my game even though I missed a few balls,” Tauson said. “She always gives you one more shot to play, and with my game that’s quite annoying, but in the second set when I had a short ball I finished it, and that made the difference.”
Tauson entered the final with a strong advantage on serve, too, with 25 aces compared with just one for Golubic, and she added seven more to make it 32 for the tournament.
Golubic broke Tauson three times, only to drop her own serve six times.
Tauson is a former Australian Open junior champion and became the first Dane to top the world junior rankings in 2019.
Her performance in Lyon is even more impressive considering she faced top seed Ekaterina Alexandrova in the first round.
The 28-year-old Golubic, ranked world No. 130, was in her third career WTA Tour final and first since losing in Linz, Austria, in October 2016.
Golubic won her only career title in July that year, on home clay in Gstaad, and ended the season with a career-high ranking of No. 57.
“It was a good week for me, a good run. [Tauson] was pretty solid in the final, but I’m disappointed I couldn’t do a bit more,” Golubic said. “She was really hitting big, hitting the lines all the time.”
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