Australian wild card Taylah Preston thrilled her home fans at the Hobart International by outhitting No. 1 seed Emma Raducanu 6-2, 6-4 to reach the first semifinal on the WTA Tour Driven by Mercedes-Benz of her career.
The 20-year-old, ranked No. 204, had only won one tour-level match prior to this week — at San Diego 2024 — but backed up her earlier upsets of No. 5 seed Jessica Bouzas Maneiro and Rebecca Sramkova to notch her first career Top 30 victory over Raducanu, ranked No. 29.
“I don’t really know what to say,” said Preston after slamming a forehand winner to seal her first match point. “I’m just really happy that I’m through to the next round and get to play here again in front of everyone.”
Preston’s success in Hobart comes after several months of rebuilding her form on the ITF World Tennis Tour. The San Diego win two years ago, over Magdalena Frech, had seemed to presage a breakthrough that year. At the age of 18, Preston also stretched Caroline Garcia to three sets in Adelaide, reached her first WTA 125 final in Puerto Vallarta and rose to a career high of No. 134. But by last September, she had fallen back to No. 266. She spent the autumn grinding through Australian ITF events, picking up W35 titles in Wagga Wagga, Darwin and Brisbane.
Against Raducanu, Preston found a top-notch level of clean, aggressive ball-striking, firing 21 winners to the former US Open champion’s nine. On Wednesday, Raducanu had been rejuvenated by an overnight postponement, coming from 4-2 down in the second set to defeat Camila Osorio in her first-round match. But following a lengthy rain delay at 2-1 to Preston on Thursday, the opposite occurred. On resumption, Raducanu leaked forehand errors to drop serve twice, while Preston notched two love holds.
Raducanu cleaned up her errors in the second set, and went up a break as Preston wobbled for the first time, dumping a sitter forehand into the net down break point. But the Briton missed a point to go up 4-1 with a double break, and in the subsequent game Preston smacked a series of glorious winners on the line to level at 3-3.
The highest-quality passage of play saw Raducanu and Preston exchange two more service breaks. But when Raducanu served to stay in the match down 5-4, she let a 40-0 lead slip. Another forehand error gave Preston match point, which she converted with relish.
The home player will bid to keep her fairytale run going against either No. 3 seed Iva Jovic, who defeated No. 8 seed Magda Linette 6-3, 6-7(5), 6-2 in a marathon contest that ended after midnight local time. Jovic first served for the match at 5-4 in the second set, only for Linette to make a valiant comeback and force a decider. But the 33-year-old Pole, who had played five sets the previous day across her two match wins, faded in the third set.
Jovic, 18, advances to her second semifinal in as many weeks, having lost to eventual champion Elina Svitolina at that stage in Auckland.
Former finalist Cocciaretto returns to semifinals
Earlier, Elisabetta Cocciaretto looked unstoppable for long stretches of her Hobart quarterfinal against Anna Bondar. Except for the four times Mother Nature forced play to stop, including once before the match even began on an overcast Thursday afternoon.
Fittingly, four was also the number of games Bondar managed to win, as Cocciaretto overpowered her from start to finish in a 6-2, 6-2 victory that concluded nearly three hours past its scheduled start time.
The win sends the 24-year-old Italian to her first hard-court semifinal since 2023, when she reached the final here in Hobart. She is now 9-3 at the event in her career.
It also marked the second straight meeting between the two players disrupted by weather. And as frustrating as Thursday’s delays were for fans, they were nothing compared to the chaos that was their previous encounter.
“Actually, with Anna, we played the semifinal three years ago in Lausanne, and we took nine hours to finish the match for the rain, I swear,” Cocciaretto said in her on-court interview. “So today was quite better, actually. But I mean, outdoors, it’s always like this.
“We try to stay focused, to play our best and to give the best on the court.”
Cocciaretto won that match in Lausanne as well, though in far tighter fashion — 6-7(3), 7-6(6), 7-5 in 3 hours and 34 minutes of actual playing time.
There was no such drama this time around, as Cocciaretto broke Bondar in the opening game as part of a 4-0 start. The rest of the set was choppy, with three rain delays in quick succession, but she eventually closed it out in two hours despite only 40 minutes of on-court action.
The former Hobart finalist finished the set with 11 winners to just five unforced errors and carried that form into the second set. She ended the match with 24 winners and 13 unforced errors, while breaking Bondar four times, twice in each set.
But it was the third break that gave her a 3-2 lead in the second set, sparking a run of four straight games to end the match.
Cocciaretto will face Antonia Ruzic in the semifinals after the 22-year-old Croat defeated Olga Danilovic 6-3, 6-3 to reach the first WTA semifinal of her career. Ruzic and Cocciaretto met three times in 2025, with Ruzic holding a 2-1 head-to-head advantage — including both of their hard-court encounters.
