Antonia Ruzic About

Tonka from Cakovec: Croatia's No. 1 swings first and asks questions later

Antonia Ruzic reached the tour the unfashionable way — through years on the ITF grind out of Cakovec in northern Croatia. Born on 20 January 2003, Ružić has won 12 singles titles on the ITF Women's Circuit before the tour started paying attention. She made her Fed Cup debut for Croatia in 2020, and she's a right-hander whose junior path famously forked between two sports — she was a youth karate champion who ultimately chose the racquet.

The game is built on pace and first-strike tennis. Ruzic is a hard-hitting baseliner who hunts winners and is most comfortable on quicker surfaces, which her ledger backs up — she holds a 94-40 career record on hard and is comfortable indoors as well. Across her career she's gone 8-12 against the top 50 and 1-2 versus the top 10, the profile of a player whose ceiling against elite opposition is still being mapped — the racquet speed travels, the margins are thin.

The breakthrough came in 2024 and 2025. On her WTA Tour debut as a qualifier at the 2024 Jasmin Open in Monastir, she reached the quarterfinals with wins over fourth seed Nadia Podoroska and Lily Miyazaki before losing to Lucia Bronzetti. Following the 2025 French Open, she made her top-100 debut on 9 June 2025. She reached her second WTA Tour quarterfinal at the WTA 500 Monterrey Open as a qualifier, beating eighth seed Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova and Elisabetta Cocciaretto before falling to Marie Bouzková. She made her major main-draw debut at the 2025 US Open, losing to Taylor Townsend in the first round.

The arc has kept climbing into 2026. She holds a career-high singles ranking of world No. 65, achieved on 19 January 2026, and is the current No. 1 Croatian singles player. Now ranked 58, the open question is whether the pace that carried her through qualifying can survive seeded draws across a full season — with the clay swing through the Italian Open and French Open the next measuring stick.

Antonia Ruzic at a glance

Antonia Ruzic is 23 years old, is from Croatia, and is ranked No. 83 in the WTA rankings.