Austrian dream quarter-final

Austria's women's tennis is looking forward to a real holiday! Two Austrians, Lilli Tagger and Anastasia Potapova, will meet in the quarter-finals of the Upper Austria Ladies Linz. This means that for the first time since 1997, a local heroine will be in the singles semi-finals of Austria's biggest women's sporting event.

Anastasia Potapova, Linz 2023 winner, won her round of 16 match against Tamara Korpatsch from Germany with a commanding 6:2, 6:1. Before that, Lilli Tagger added another chapter to her Linz fairytale. The 18-year-old from East Tyrol caused the Design Centre to literally shake with her 6:2, 7:6 victory over Liudmila Samsonova and provided a red-white-red tennis moment of glory.

While Lilli Tagger played almost perfect tennis until the middle of the second set, third seed Samsonova struggled to find her rhythm in her first tournament match. She also lacked the necessary self-confidence after five consecutive defeats. Tagger, meanwhile, was on gala form and even joined in the „Lilli La Ola“ that swept through the Design Centre during the changeover. Samsonova found much better timing on her forehand in the decisive phase of the second set, breaking Tagger just as she was serving for the match and forcing the game into a tie-break. Tagger's astonishing mental strength came into play once again. Just like in round one against Paula Badosa, she made it really exciting. „The tickets have to pay off, don't they?“ said the player from Lienz with a laugh to tournament ambassador Barbara Schett. She had previously fended off eight set points and converted her fourth match point to the cheers of more than 2000 enthusiastic fans. The Linz Design Centre was a real cauldron!

„It was a really crazy game, but I think I managed it very well, also with the help of the crowd. It feels like a dream to me. I haven't realised it yet. But I'm playing my best tournament at this level at the moment,“ said the Austrian, summing up after defeating a top 30 player for the first time in her career. Tagger has set several further career milestones with this success. Next Monday, she will be ranked among the top 100 players in the world for the first time, and she will also serve in the main draw of a Grand Slam tournament for the first time at the French Open.

But first, her quarter-final at the Upper Austria Ladies Linz against her doubles partner and compatriot Anastasia Potapova takes centre stage on Friday (3rd match after 1pm/live on ORF1). The 25-year-old Potapova put in an impressive performance against the qualifier Korpatsch. The Viennese scored eight straight points with her strong backhand alone and was clearly the better player apart from a brief period of weakness in the final spurt when she lost her serve once again. „I was pretty nervous yesterday. Today was much better. I'm happy to be back in the quarter-finals here. I played very variably today. That was certainly one of the keys to victory. It's incredible that two Austrians are now playing each other in the quarter-finals in Austria. I'm very proud of that,“ summarised Potapova.

The last time two Austrians faced each other at the Upper Austria Ladies Linz was in 1995, when Beate Reinstadler won against Petra Schwarz-Ritter.

In a clash of former tournament winners, Karolina Pliskova, who won in Linz in 2014, dethroned the slightly weakened defending champion Ekaterina Alexandrova. After exactly one hour, the Czech clearly prevailed 6:1, 6:3 and celebrated her first Top 20 victory since the summer of 2024 after a long injury break. Pliskova will play Donna Vekic in the quarter-finals, who reached the semi-finals two years ago. This time, she marched through qualifying and benefited on Thursday from the fact that Anhelina Kalinina from Ukraine was unable to play in her round of 16 match due to illness. The tournament opens on Friday at 1 p.m. with the match between Jelena Ostapenko (Latvia) and Elena-Gabriela Ruse (Romania), before top seed Mirra Andreeva then takes on Sorana Cirstea (Romania).