Donna Vekic lost in the final round of qualifying at Queen’s Club in June, to Anna Blinkova. A week later she was the champion. She got into the main draw as a lucky loser, beat Mika Stojsavljevic, Marie Bouzkova, Karolina Pliskova and Katie Boulter, then took the final from Emma Raducanu 6-0, 7-6(6), according to the WTA and the LTA. In the second set she trailed 5-2 and saved two set points. It was her first WTA 500 title and the fifth of her career.
“Winning 6-0 in tennis can be a curse sometimes,” she said afterwards, according to the WTA. “But I was just thinking — you know, she started playing really well in the second set, really raised her level, and I was just thinking to myself, ‘Okay, just stay with her and try to make her play an extra ball.'”
The week fit a career that has kept producing its best results on grass and on big stages: a Wimbledon semifinal, an Olympic silver medal for Croatia and a first WTA final at 16.
Osijek and an early start
Vekic was born in Osijek, Croatia, on 28 June 1996. Both parents played professional sport, according to her WTA biography: her mother, Brankica, was a hurdler and her father, Igor, a football goalkeeper. She grew up playing and training in London, according to the LTA, and speaks Croatian, English and Italian.
She reached her first WTA final in Tashkent in 2012 on her tour main-draw debut, the youngest WTA finalist since Tamira Paszek in 2005, and broke into the top 100 in January 2013. At Kuala Lumpur in 2014, ranked 95th, she beat Dominika Cibulkova, then No. 10, in the final. At 17 years and 10 months she was the youngest WTA champion since 2006, according to the WTA.
Nottingham to the top 20
Her second title came on grass at Nottingham in 2017, where she beat Johanna Konta, then ranked eighth, in the final. In 2018 she held four match points in the Washington final and lost to Svetlana Kuznetsova, and she reached her first Grand Slam fourth round at Wimbledon. The next year she beat Petra Kvitova, then No. 2, on the way to the St. Petersburg final, reached the Nottingham final again and made her first Grand Slam quarterfinal at the US Open, where Belinda Bencic beat her. She finished 2019 at No. 19.
Knee surgery and the way back
Vekic had knee surgery at the start of 2021, and in the spring of 2022 she tore a plantar fascia and dealt with further knee and foot injuries, according to her WTA biography. She won Courmayeur in October 2021, beating Clara Tauson in the final, and in 2022 came through qualifying to reach the San Diego final, where Iga Swiatek beat her. In 2023 she reached the Australian Open quarterfinals, losing to the eventual champion Aryna Sabalenka, won her fourth title in Monterrey and was runner-up in Berlin.
Wimbledon and Paris, 2024
Her first Grand Slam semifinal came at Wimbledon in 2024, in her 43rd Grand Slam main draw, according to the WTA. “Those couple of years were very tough,” she said after the quarterfinal, referring to 2021 and 2022. “I didn’t think I was ever going to come back to the level that I even had last year.”
In the semifinal she hit 42 winners against Jasmine Paolini and took the first set 6-2, but Paolini won 2-6, 6-4, 7-6(8) in the longest women’s semifinal in Wimbledon history, according to the WTA. The last two points were decided by Vekic forehands that broke down under Paolini’s defence, the WTA reported.
Weeks later she reached the Olympic final in Paris and lost to Zheng Qinwen. The silver medal was Croatia’s first Olympic medal in women’s singles, according to her WTA biography. She also reached the Bad Homburg final that year and rose to a career-high No. 17 in January 2025 after a fourth-round run at the Australian Open.
Playing style
Grass has been her most productive surface for finals. Before Queen’s, six of her 15 WTA finals had come on the surface, according to the WTA. In the Queen’s final she broke Raducanu three times in the opening set and lost one point on her first serve in that set, according to the LTA. She says her favourite surface is hard court.
Grand Slam best results
- Wimbledon: semifinals (2024)
- Australian Open: quarterfinals (2023)
- US Open: quarterfinals (2019)
Season snapshot — 22 September 2026
Vekic is the eighth seed at the Singapore Tennis Open this week, ranked 37th on the tournament’s seeding list, and opens against Wang Xinyu, who beat her in Cincinnati in August. She won the Queen’s title in June and reached WTA 125 finals in Istanbul and Manila earlier in the season. Her 2026 record stood at 26-20 on the WTA’s player page before this week. Our Singapore draw preview covers the rest of the field.
This snapshot is dated and will change. The career record above does not.
