Lilli Tagger

Lilli Tagger is the most consequential Austrian women's prospect since the Thiem era, and she's built around the rarest shot in the women's game. Born in Lienz in February 2008, she pushed to abandon her two-hander as a preteen — inspired by Roger Federer and compatriot Dominic Thiem, she wanted the switch at 10, and it took two years and winning a bet with her coach before she was allowed to do it. She moved to Varese, Italy, where she's coached by Francesca Schiavone, the last woman with a one-handed backhand to win a Grand Slam title, at Roland Garros in 2010.

The backhand is the headline, but it isn't the whole game. At 6-foot-1 she pairs it with real serve power — a tall frame, a big serve (33 aces in five matches in Mumbai) and a powerful forehand to complement her signature shot. The junior breakthrough was Paris: at the 2025 girls' event she went through unseeded without dropping a set, beating four seeds including world No. 1 Emerson Jones and Hannah Klugman 6-2, 6-0 in the final to become the first Austrian to win a junior major.

Her senior climb has been just as fast. Her first ITF title came at W35 Terrassa over Lois Boisson, who'd later reach the Roland Garros senior semifinals. In late 2025 she reached a WTA Tour final in Jiujiang, then her first WTA 125 final in Mumbai. The signature run came at home: at the Linz Open she beat Paula Badosa and Liudmila Samsonova to make a WTA 500 quarterfinal, falling to Anastasia Potapova. That run made her the first player born in 2008 to crack the top 100 of either tour.

The current beat is a teenager learning the tour week to week. She has a career-high of No. 90, a WTA 1000 main-draw debut already logged at Indian Wells, and a first-round exit to Xinyu Wang at the French Open. With Austria still searching for a post-Thiem flag-bearer, Tagger is the most obvious answer — and the most fun to watch.