Donna Vekic

Donna Vekic
Vekić at the 2015 Wimbledon Championships
Nation:	Croatia
Birthday:	28th June 1996 (age 24)
Size:	179 cm
Weight:	64 kg
1st professional season:	2012
Playing hand:	Right, two-handed backhand
Prize money:	$ 4,234,052
singles
Career record:	265: 196
Career title:	2 WTA , 5 ITF
Highest ranking:	19 (November 4, 2019)
Current placement:	24
Grand Slam record
Double
Career record:	13:27
Career title:	0 WTA , 1 ITF
Highest ranking:	171 (August 20, 2018)
Current placement:	191
Grand Slam record
Last update of the infobox: March 16, 2020
Sources: official player profiles at the ATP / WTA and ITF (see web links )

Donna Vekić (born June 28, 1996 in Osijek ) is a Croatian tennis player .

Career

Vekić was born into a sports family in 1996. Her grandmother was a sports teacher and discovered talents like Davor Šuker . Her mother Brankica (née Špiranović) was a track and field athlete. Vekić started playing tennis at the age of six, and when she was nine she trained at Nick Bollettieri's academy in Florida . She made her debut at the ITF Women's Circuit in 2010 and won her first professional title in 2011.

At the beginning of 2012 Vekić started in Kuala Lumpur for the first time in the qualification of a WTA tournament, in which she was eliminated in the first round and then stood in five tournaments in the $ 25,000 category in the final, two of which she won in Bengaluru and Ferghana . At the same time, she also competed in the junior competitions of the Grand Slam tournaments and ended her career as a junior after reaching the quarter-finals at Wimbledon . At the US Open 2012 she started for the first time in the qualifying round of a women's Grand Slam tournament and made it to the final round there. For the first time, however, Vekić drew attention to herself when she was only sixteen years old in Tashkent and made her first appearance in the main draw of a WTA tournament, where she had to admit defeat to Irina-Camelia Begu .

At the Australian Open 2013 Vekić was then for the first time in the main round of a Grand Slam tournament, in which she beat Andrea Hlaváčková at the beginning , before she was eliminated in the second round against Caroline Wozniacki . Nevertheless, she managed to jump into the top 100 of the tennis world rankings . Then she won her biggest title to date in an ITF tournament in the $ 50.00 category in Istanbul and moved into her second WTA final on grass in Birmingham , which she lost to Daniela Hantuchová . Even if she could not maintain this form until the end of the year, she finished the season as the youngest player in the top 100. At the beginning of 2014, Vekić won her first WTA title in Kuala Lumpur and beat a player from the top for the first time in the final with Dominika Cibulková 10 of the world rankings. This made her the youngest WTA tournament winner since Vania King in 2006 in Bangkok . But instead of building on the success, she then got into a playful crisis and could not survive the second round of any of her 16 subsequent tournament appearances until the end of the season.

As a result, Vekić fell out of the top 100 in the world rankings in 2015 and had to compete more frequently in qualifying for WTA tournaments. Despite individual notable successes such as reaching the third round of a Grand Slam tournament in Paris for the first time and moving into her second final in Tashkent , in which she was defeated by Nao Hibino , she could not work her way up the ranking noticeably. It wasn't until the end of 2016 that Vekić found more consistency in her performances when she first advanced to the final of an ITF tournament in the $ 100,000 category in St. Petersburg and then won another in Sharm el-Sheikh after a final victory against Sara Sorribes Tormo . At the beginning of 2017 she returned to the top 100 in the world with a win at the Australian Open , but it was not until the middle of the year that she landed her second win against a top 10 player in Nottingham , where she beat Johanna Konta in the final , won another WTA tournament after more than three years. Nevertheless, the performance of Vekić, who then came to the third round for the first time at the US Open , remained inconsistent.

After another changeable start to 2018, Vekić achieved her best results again on grass with another semi-final in Nottingham and the first time in a Grand Slam round of 16 at Wimbledon . She then advanced to her sixth WTA final in Washington , but had to admit defeat to Svetlana Kuznetsova in three sets. She closed the year for the first time by reaching the semi-finals in Tokyo , where she beat two top 10 players at the beginning with Sloane Stephens and in the quarter-finals with Caroline Garcia , as well as the round of 16 in Beijing , in which she was defeated by Anastasija Sevastova in the top 50 in the ranking. At the beginning of the 2019 season, Vekić advanced to the semi-finals in Brisbane , where she failed to Karolína Plíšková . In St. Petersburg she came after a quarter-final victory over Petra Kvitová then for the first time in the final of a tournament in the premier category, but lost there to Kiki Bertens . With the start of the clay court season, Vekić was much more stable and successively reached the quarter-finals in Stuttgart , in which she lost to Naomi Osaka , the third round in Madrid and the second round of the French Open , in which she was defeated by Johanna Konta. Then she was on grass for the second time after 2017 in the final of Nottingham , which she lost this time to Caroline Garcia in the tie-break of the third set. On hard court, she advanced to the semi-finals in San José , where she was eliminated against Aryna Sabalenka , moved into the third round of Cincinnati and played her first quarter-finals in a Grand Slam tournament at the US Open after a four-round win against Julia Görges , in which she eventually succumbed to Belinda Bencic . Thanks to her good results, Vekić qualified for the WTA Elite Trophy in Zhuhai for the first time at the end of the season , where she failed in the group stage after two defeats against Kiki Bertens and Dajana Jastremska . Nevertheless, at the end of the year, she reached her highest position in the world ranking list to date with position 19.

In 2020 she reached the third round of the Australian Open for the first time, in which she lost again to Dajana Jastremska.

In 2012 Vekić made her debut for the Croatian Fed Cup team in the 3-0 defeat against Poland . Since then, she has contested 19 matches in singles and doubles for her country, of which she was able to win eleven (individual balance 11: 7).

successes

singles

Tournament victories

No.	date	competition	category	Topping	Final opponent	Result
1.	July 25, 2011	Chiswick	ITF $ 10,000	Hard court	Bojana Bobusic	3: 6, 6: 3, 6: 3
2.	March 24, 2012	Bengaluru	ITF $ 25,000	Hard court	Andrea Koch Benvenuto	6: 2, 6: 4
3.	May 20, 2012	Ferghana	ITF $ 25,000	Hard court	Nadia Kitschenok	6: 2, 6: 2
4th	April 28, 2013	Istanbul	ITF $ 50,000	Hard court	Yelisaveta Kulichkova	6: 4, 7: 6 4
5.	April 20, 2014	Kuala Lumpur	WTA International	Hard court	Dominika Cibulková	5: 7, 7: 5, 7: 6 4
6th	October 23, 2016	Sharm El Sheikh	ITF $ 100,000	Hard court	Sara Sorribes Tormo	6: 2, 6: 7 7 , 6: 3
7th	18th June 2017	Nottingham	WTA International	race	Johanna Konta	2: 6, 7: 6 3 , 7: 5

Final participation

No.	date	competition	category	Topping	Tournament winner	Result
1.	April 18, 2011	Hvar	ITF $ 10,000	sand	Ema Burgic	5: 7, 6: 7 2
2.	August 15, 2011	West end	ITF $ 10,000	Hard court	Lu Jiajing	4: 6, 6: 7 4
3.	October 22, 2011	Lagos 1	ITF $ 25,000	Hard court	Elina Switolina	4: 6, 3: 6
4th	October 29, 2011	Lagos 2	ITF $ 25,000	Hard court	Tamaryn Hendler	4: 6, 5: 7
5.	April 21, 2012	Namangan	ITF $ 25,000	Hard court	Olga Putschkova	6: 3, 3: 6, 2: 6
6th	July 22, 2012	Campos do Jordão	ITF $ 25,000	Hard court	María Irigoyen	5: 7, 0: 6
7th	July 29, 2012	Wrexham	ITF $ 25,000	Hard court	Carina Witthöft	2: 6, 7: 6 4 , 2: 6
8th.	15th September 2012	Tashkent	WTA International	Hard court	Irina-Camelia Begu	4: 6, 4: 6
9.	June 16, 2013	Birmingham	WTA International	race	Daniela Hantuchová	6: 7 5 , 4: 6
10.	3rd October 2015	Tashkent	WTA International	Hard court	Nao Hibino	2: 6, 2: 6
11.	September 24, 2016	St. Petersburg	ITF $ 100,000	Hard court (hall)	Natalja Wichljanzewa	1: 6, 2: 6
12.	5th August 2018	Washington	WTA International	Hard court	Svetlana Kuznetsova	6: 4, 6: 7 7 , 2: 6
13.	3rd February 2019	St. Petersburg	WTA Premier	Hard court (hall)	Kiki Bertens	6: 7 2 , 4: 6
14th	June 16, 2019	Nottingham	WTA International	race	Caroline Garcia	6: 2, 6: 7 4 , 6: 7 4

Double

Tournament victories

No.	date	competition	category	Topping	Partner	Final opponents	Result
1.	August 15, 2011	West end	ITF $ 10,000	Hard court	Alexandra Walker	Anouk Delefortrie Déborah Kerfs	6: 4, 6: 3

Performing in Grand Slam tournaments

singles

competition	2013	2014	2015	2016	2017	2018	2019	2020	Career
Australian Open	2	1	1	1	2	2	2	3	3
French Open	1	1	3	1	1	2	AF		AF
Wimbledon	1	2	Q2	1	2	AF	1		AF
US Open	2	1	-	Q3	3	1	VF		VF

Double

competition	2013	2014	2015	2016	2017	2018	2019	2020	Career
Australian Open	-	1	2	-	-	2	1	-	2
French Open	-	1	-	-	1	2	-		2
Wimbledon	-	1	-	1	1	1	-		1
US Open	1	1	-	-	1	-	-		1

Web links

Commons : Donna Vekić  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• WTA profile Donna Vekić (English)
• ITF profile Donna Vekić (English)
• Fed Cup Statistics for Donna Vekić (English)
• Donna Vekić's website (English, Croatian)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Biography. In: donnavekic.com. April 22, 2014, accessed April 22, 2014 . 
2. ↑ Ivan Speck: Introducing the new teen queens who are set to take the tennis world by storm. In: dailymail.co.uk . June 23, 2013, accessed November 22, 2013 . 
3. ↑ Vekic and Date-Krumm: Young meets old. In: tennisnet.com. August 10, 2013, accessed April 22, 2014 . 
4. ↑ First title! 17 year old Vekic wins WTA tournament in Kuala Lumpur. In: tennisnet.com. April 20, 2014, accessed April 22, 2014 .