Laura Samson About

Junior No. 1 to WTA No. 116: the Czech serve that skipped a queue

Samson is the next name off the Czech production line, and she got to the top of the junior game before she had a professional record worth the name. She came up at TK Sparta Prague, winning her first junior title as a 13-year-old at a J5 in Prostějov in October 2021, then took the 2023 Wimbledon girls' doubles with compatriot Alena Kovačková and lost the 2024 Roland Garros girls' singles final. She dropped the -ová in 2024 so she would stop being filed as L. Samsonova.

The game is built down from a 1.82 m frame: a flat first serve she leans on up the T, plus a willingness to finish in the forecourt that most teenagers on this circuit don't carry. Her career rates argue both halves, with 72 percent of first-serve points won and a 6.9 percent ace rate against a 72.1 percent hold rate and a winners-to-unforced ratio of 0.8.

The tour breakthrough was 2023. At the Abu Dhabi Open she went through Barbora Krejcikova and then Qinwen Zheng to a semifinal, followed it with a 6-2, 6-0 win over Jelena Ostapenko in Madrid and Anett Kontaveit in Rome, and reached the second round at Roland Garros. She and Zheng are level at 2-2 on record, all four on hard.

As of September 2026 she sits at WTA No. 116, a career high first reached on 25 August 2026 and 204 places better than a year earlier. April supplied the tour-level proof: Tatjana Maria and, from a set down, Xinyu Wang at the Madrid Open, before Anna Bondar ended it in the round of 32. Her maiden WTA 125 title came the same year, at Targu Mures.

Laura Samson at a glance

Laura Samson is 18 years old; was born in Olenegorsk, Russia; stands 1.82 m; plays right-handed; and is ranked No. 113 in the WTA rankings.