Harriet Dart wins first WTA singles title with Guangzhou comeback

Harriet Dart claimed her first WTA Tour singles title by recovering from a set down to beat Austria's Lilli Tagger in the Guangzhou Open final. The 30-year-old Briton won 4-6 6-3 6-4, completing a run from qualifying to the trophy at the WTA 250 event, BBC Sport reported.

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Dart entered the final ranked 115th in the world and as Britain's number five, while 18-year-old Tagger was ranked 53rd. Neither the opening-set deficit nor repeated setbacks in the deciding set stopped Dart from converting her first appearance in a tour-level final into a title. It was her fourth comeback victory after losing the first set across seven matches during the tournament.

The deciding set required Dart to establish an advantage more than once. Tagger erased two leads before Dart broke again to move 4-3 ahead, then held serve to put herself a game away from victory. Two championship points followed on Tagger's serve in the ninth game. Dart missed both, including an opportunity on a mid-court ball that she sent into the net on the second.

Dart secured the title on her third championship point with a service winner, then fell to the court before celebrating with her team. For Tagger, the defeat ended a tournament in which she had beaten seven-time major champion Venus Williams on the way to the final. The Austrian teenager was the French Open junior champion in 2025.

The Guangzhou result will take Dart back into the world's top 100, according to the BBC, which reported that she would gain direct entry to January's Australian Open main draw. She reached a career-best ranking of 70th in 2024, a season that included a third-round appearance at Wimbledon and a second-round appearance at the US Open. She has spent most of the past two seasons outside the top 100.

Dart has been working with former Wimbledon champion Marion Bartoli during her resurgence. The BBC reported that she has won 19 of her 24 tour-level hard-court matches since Wimbledon. Her overall WTA Tour record for the season now stands at 23 wins from 34 matches, giving her the highest season winning percentage of her career.