{"id":452991,"date":"2026-02-04T09:20:40","date_gmt":"2026-02-04T09:20:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/452991\/"},"modified":"2026-02-04T09:20:40","modified_gmt":"2026-02-04T09:20:40","slug":"clara-tauson-set-to-repeat-last-years-success-in-abu-dhabi-as-she-cruises-past-waltert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/452991\/","title":{"rendered":"Clara Tauson set to repeat last year’s success in Abu Dhabi as she cruises past Waltert"},"content":{"rendered":"

Clara Tauson had a superb start to the Abu Dhabi Open when she cruised past Switzerland’s Simona Waltert 6-3, 6-1 to reach the next round. Tauson reached the final of the tournament last year, where she lost to Mirra Andreeva.<\/p>\n

Clara Tauson<\/a> is ready for the quarter-final in the WTA 500 tournament in Abu Dhabi, where she is seeded third.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, the 23-year-old Dane played her first match in the tournament and, despite a slow start, won very confidently over the 25-year-old Swiss Simona Waltert<\/a>.<\/p>\n

She won 6-3, 6-1 after just under 70 minutes of play in Tauson’s first match since losing to Victoria Mboko<\/a> in the Australian Open.<\/p>\n

In the next round, she is set to face the 26-year-old American McCartney Kessler<\/a>, who is ranked 32nd in the world and won the only match so far between the two players in 2023.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, Tauson initially found it difficult to settle into her normal rhythm and lost her own first two service games.<\/p>\n

Fortunately for the Dane, Waltert was even worse. The Swiss’s first serve was often without speed and power and posed no major challenge for the strong and aggressive Dane.<\/p>\n

Waltert searched ahead 2-1, but from then on, Tauson regained her composure and at the same time kept the level in the opponent’s service games.<\/p>\n

It resulted in a very one-sided affair, and 6-3 for Tauson in the first set.<\/p>\n

Tauson’s game wasn’t exactly flawless, but overall, the game was good enough to outmaneuver and grind Waltert convincingly in the second set.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Clara Tauson had a superb start to the Abu Dhabi Open when she cruised past Switzerland’s Simona Waltert…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":452992,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-452991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=452991"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452991\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/452992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=452991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=452991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=452991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}