"Beating players like that shows what you can do" - Clara Tauson on defeating both Aryna Sabalenka and Iga Swiatek in 2025

Tuesday, 07 October 2025 at 04:30

Danish tennis star Clara Tauson has had the best season of her young WTA career in 2025, notching several top 10 wins behind very solid performances. The 22-year old stunned the likes of Aryna Sabalenka and Iga Swiatek, prompting many to consider her one of the players to beat this year.

Tauson is currently competing at the Wuhan Open, where she overcame Serbian Olga Danilovic in the opening round. The 10th seed next takes on Croatian Antonia Ruzic, as she hopes to end the year on a strong note.

In an interview prior to her Wuhan campaign, Tauson reflected on the two biggest wins of her career. The Copenhagen native defeated World No.1 Aryna Sabalenka earlier this year in Dubai, before upsetting Wimbledon champion Iga Swiatek at the Canadian Open in August.

"I think it obviously gives you confidence that you can play with these players and beat them as well," said Tauson. "I always believed I could beat the top players. I have had some matches where I was 6-4 in the third set with them and this showed I was close, what was possible."

Defeating top players brings added pressure, admits Tauson

The World No.12 expressed her pride and self-belief in toppling the giants of the sport. However, she revealed she needed to deal with higher expectations after getting the job done, as she now has a target on her back whenever she takes to the courts.

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"Beating players like that shows what you can do and it also means it raises some expectations and maybe I need to be better at managing that," she continued. "Next year, hopefully I can do the same kind of year and hopefully even better, but it’s a different scenario for me right now than it was one year ago.
"It’s different emotions that I need to manage and I need to obviously try to keep playing like I’m playing and hopefully I have a couple of good tournaments left in me."

Tauson is knocking on the door of the top 10 on the WTA rankings, and is hoping to join that elite category behind a strong result in Wuhan.

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Arthur Ajayi

Growing up in a household where soccer was king, my earliest memories are filled with chants from packed stadiums and the rhythm of a ball being passed across neighborhood streets. But somewhere along the way, the quiet elegance and raw emotion of tennis pulled me in. What began as a curiosity became a lifelong passion; not just for the sport itself, but for the stories it tells: of grit, of heartbreak, of improbable comebacks and human resilience.

As a tennis writer, I bring the observational lens of someone who didn’t grow up in the sport, but fell in love with it as an outsider; a perspective that lets me see both its technical beauty and its emotional depth. Over the years working with TennisUpToDate, I’ve had the privilege of reaching more than 3.5 million readers worldwide, with one of my features ranking among the site’s top three articles.

With a background in storytelling and a creative mind always searching for meaning beyond the scoreboard, I aim to craft narratives that go deeper than results and rankings. Whether it’s a rising star breaking through or a veteran fighting off Father Time, I try to capture the heartbeat behind the headlines.

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