At 18, unseeded Lilli Tagger wins her first WTA title in Prague

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.

Lilli Tagger came into the final unseeded and ranked 74th in the world, with a 9-8 season record and no titles at any level, tour or challenger. She had reached one previous final and lost it, so Sunday was only her second WTA final. Across the net, Daria Snigur, 24 and the tournament's eighth seed, was contesting her first tour-level final too.

The first set needed a tiebreak to settle it. Snigur broke immediately for a 2-0 lead, Tagger broke back to close to 4-5, and from 6-6 Tagger won the breaker 7-3. The second set turned on a double break, Tagger going up 3-1 and then closing it out 6-2, reaching two match points along the way; Snigur saved the first before Tagger converted the second to win 7-6(3), 6-2. Nine of Tagger's serves went for aces against one from Snigur, she won 81 percent of her first-serve points, held 8 of her 9 service games, and finished with 74 of the match's 129 points.

The run to the final went through the seeds. Tagger opened with a straight-sets win over Xinyu Gao, 6-2, 6-4, then beat Mai Hontama 6-4, 6-4 to reach the quarter-final, where she beat the third seed, Sara Bejlek, 6-3, 6-4. The semi-final needed a decider: second seed Barbora Krejcikova won the first-set tiebreak 7-6(5), Tagger leveled by taking the second set 6-3, and the third set went to another tiebreak, which Tagger won 7-4 to close it out 7-6(4) and reach the final. At 18, with one lost final now followed by one won, Tagger has only just begun building a finals record.

Match tale, 26 July 2026, sources: Livesport Prague Open, api-tennis