As a teenager the Czech wrote to Jana Novotna, the 1998 Wimbledon champion, and asked to learn from her. What Novotna passed on before her death in 2017 was a whole way of playing: variety, soft hands, the confidence to change a rally's shape rather than just outhit it. Krejcikova plays like someone taught to think, folding in slice, angle and the volley into an all-court game that reads a point two shots ahead. It is craft you rarely see now, and it makes her dangerous against the biggest strikers, Aryna Sabalenka and Iga Swiatek among them.
She has won 2 major singles titles. The first came at Roland Garros in 2021, the promise Novotna had once seen made real on clay. The second came at Wimbledon in 2024, where she lifted the same dish her mentor had, an echo across the grass Novotna had described to her. Separately, in doubles, she was ranked world No. 1 and won seven Grand Slam titles, a parallel career built on the same feel for the court.
Eighteen. That is Lilli Tagger's age, and in Prague on Sunday she won the first WTA title of her career, beating Daria Snigur 7-6(3), 6-2 in the final. Unseeded and ranked 74th in the world, Tagger reached the trophy by beating the tournament's third and second seeds back to back, a run that ended with her first tour title at just 18.
Match taleTwenty-four. That is how many places Mayar Sherif climbed in this week's WTA rankings, from 97 to 73. The 30-year-old won the title in Iasi, a tour-level event, beating Paula Badosa in the final, and it is the biggest jump on this week's list, in a week when the very top of the WTA rankings did not move at all.
Ranking tale