Arantxa Rus

[1] At age 14, Rus played her first ITF Women's Circuit tournament at Alkmaar where she lost in the second round to Julie Coin.In 2007, Rus continued playing on the ITF Circuit, winning her first title at Vlaardingen and second at Alphen aan de Rijn.At the junior level, In 2008, Rus won the girls' singles title at the Australian Open, defeating Jessica Moore in the final and reached the semifinals at Roland Garros and quarterfinals at Wimbledon.In April, she won an ITF title in Bari beating four seeded players en-route, including Lucie Hradecká and Alberta Brianti.First, at the ITF Poitiers, she passed through the qualifying rounds, won matches against third seed Alexandra Dulgheru and Séverine Beltrame before losing in the quarterfinals to Pauline Parmentier.Then, she played at an ITF event in Nantes where she won the title without dropping a set through the tournament, with a two-set victory against Renata Voráčová in the final.She played at Stockholm, where she won the doubles title with Anastasiya Yakimova, and lost the singles final to Kristina Mladenovic.Then she played qualifying matches for the Portugal Open, beating Anne Kremer in the first round, but losing against Sesil Karatancheva in three sets.Than she played at UNICEF Open where she defeated Indy de Vroome and CoCo Vandeweghe before she lost again to Svetlana Kuznetsova.Then she played at the ITF Cuneo where she defeated Camilla Rosatello, Laura Pous Tió, Petra Martić and Mirjana Lučić but lost to Anna Tatishvili in the final.She was playing at the Open Contrexéville where as top seed she defeated Anna-Lena Grönefeld in the first round, Roxane Vaisemberg in the second, both in straight sets, but lost to Iryna Brémond in the quarterfinals.She won matches against Erika Sema, Conny Perrin, and Akgul Amanmuradova before she lost to Kristina Mladenovic in the semifinals.She missed Fed Cup matches due to a tooth infection, and then lost in the Qatar Ladies Open qualifying first round against Caroline Garcia.Then, on her first clay tournament of the year, The Oaks Club Challenger, she won her first title since the ITF Nantes in 2009.She defeated Misaki Doi, Irina Falconi, Florencia Molinero, Edina Gallovits-Hall and in the final beat Sesil Karatantcheva.In Brussels, she reached the second round after beating Zheng Jie, but had to retire because of a lower back injury in her second-round match against Sofia Arvidsson.Subsequently, for the first time in her career, she reached the last 16 of a major tournament with a victory in three sets over 25th seed Julia Görges.[4] She ended this streak in Bad Gastein,[5] where she defeated María Teresa Torró Flor and Estrella Cabeza Candela in the first two rounds.Rus stopped playing WTA tournaments and proceeded to have success in the ITF Circuit, winning four $25k singles titles on clay: at Fleurus, Alphen a/d Rijn, Vallduxo and Sant Cugat.In February, playing on indoor clay, the Netherlands faced Slovakia at the Fed Cup World Group II tie.[8] As a result of her performance, she was nominated for a Heart Award by the Fed Cup, ultimately losing to Romania's Irina-Camelia Begu.Rus reached the semifinals of another two $25k tournaments, both played on outdoor clay, in Aschaffenburg (where she had to win three qualifying rounds) and Leipzig, losing both times at that stage.She broke this streak at the singles qualifying at the French Open, where she won her first two matches against Viktoriya Tomova and Antonia Lottner.In round one, she upset 36th-ranked Tímea Babos in a three-setter, and won her second-round match against Andrea Hlaváčková, in straight sets.[13] She won her maiden singles title at the 2023 Hamburg European Open defeating Noma Noha Akugue in the final.