From karate kid to Dubai's luckiest loser, get to know Antonia Ruzic

Last Friday was an unlucky Friday 13th for Antonia Ruzic. In her first Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships qualifying round, she advanced to a 7-5, 5-4 lead over Rebecca Sramkova, and held six match points -- but wound up losing 5-7, 7-5, 6-1.

But Ruzic's luck didn't take long to turn. Five days and a few wild twists of fate later, the 23-year-old Croatian is still in Dubai -- and into her first WTA 1000 quarterfinal after No. 1 seed Elena Rybakina retired trailing 5-7, 6-4, 1-0 in their third-round match.

The first twist: a spate of withdrawals before main-draw action started. Ruzic was the sixth lucky loser to be drawn (out of seven in total), replacing Elisabetta Cocciaretto. Ironically, Cocciaretto had herself made the Doha quarterfinals as a lucky loser last week; the Italian successfully qualified for Dubai, but was forced to withdraw due to a right thigh injury.

Even so, having fallen in the first round of qualifying, No.67-ranked Ruzic shouldn't have been in the running for a lucky loser spot. But three of the second-round losers -- Sonay Kartal, Katie Volynets and Veronika Erjavec -- had already left town, and she was the highest-ranked first-round loser to have signed in.

Ruzic then proceeded to make her own luck in the main draw. She scored her first career Top 30 win over Emma Raducanu 6-1, 5-7, 6-2 in the first round, recovering after losing a 5-3 second-set lead to come back from 2-0 down in the decider. A 6-1, 6-7(2), 6-1 victory over fellow lucky loser Anastasia Zakharova set up Ruzic's first ever meeting with a Top 10 opponent against Rybakina, wuth whom she went toe-to-toe for two sets before gastrointestinal issues forced the Australian Open champion to call it quits.

Taking her wild week in stride, Ruzic -- whois known as Tonka to friends and family -- sat down with wtatennis.com to discuss her Top 100 breakthrough, what it was like to take on Naomi Osaka dressed as a jellyfish and her background in karate.

Ruzic stuck around in Dubai for the sunshine ... and got a second chance

Thinking back to the six match points she held against Sramkova in qualifying, Ruzic credits her opponent.

"She played really good on them," she said. "But I was devastated after it."

The singles main draw was far from her mind; instead, she stayed on because she was the first doubles alternate with compatriot Petra Marcinko. (They got into that main draw, too, but lost in the first round to Laura Siegemund and Vera Zvonareva.)

"And what, two, three days in the sunshine, that couldn't hurt," she said with a smile. "And then gradually, day by day, I got in as a lucky loser. And I saw that I was playing Raducanu."

It wasn't just an opportunity to win a round in the main draw, but to rectify what had gone wrong in her qualifying loss.

"As a lucky loser, you don't have pressure that much -- you get a second chance," she said. "So you just play, you want to show better than you played yesterday and keep showing up. [In qualifying], I think I started to think a lot. And that's not good when you overthink on court. And against Raducanu, I was like, 'OK, just be in every point, fight for every point and just hit the ball. That's it. Don't think, just hit the ball. That's your game. Go into the court.'"

Ruzic took on Naomi Osaka -- and her jellyfish outfit -- at the Australian Open

Four-time major champion Naomi Osaka dominated the headlines in the first few days of the Australian Open last month, stepping out for her first-round match in a jellyfish-inspired outfit designed by Robert Wun.

Ruzic was her opponent -- and over the course of their contest she seized some of the spotlight for herself on her 23rd birthday, playing a brilliant match before being edged 6-3, 3-6, 6-4 by Osaka.

Waiting to be called on to court, Ruzic hadn't even realized who the veiled figure near her was.

"We were standing in the hallway, [but] there were mirrors," she recalled. "So I was seeing not double, but four of her. And I thought, is it some kind of opening or show? Because I couldn't see her face, and I thought there were four people. And then they said, 'OK, Naomi, you can go.' And I'm like, 'Wow, that's her!'"

Ruzic was a fan of Osaka's use of fashion as a means of expressing herself, and a even bigger fan of her first Grand Slam show court atmosphere.

"That was, I think, the most incredible experience," she said. "The crowd was great. And I'm happy with how I played that match. And of course, it gave me more experience and more confidence to play later in the season."

Ruzic has been gradually emerging over the past two years

Over the past two years, Ruzic's rise on to the WTA Tour Driven by Mercedes-Benz has been a steady one. She made her tour-level debut at Monastir 2024, reaching the quarterfinals off the bat to help cut her year-end ranking from No. 268 to No. 145 that year. She cracked the Top 100 in June last year, reached her first WTA 500 quarterfinal in Monterrey, made her Grand Slam main-draw debut at the US Open and finished the season at No. 75. Last month, Ruzic continued to hit milestones, making her first semifinal in Hobart.

"People are saying that my career has been progressed gradually," Ruzic said. "So nothing was rushed. And yeah, I'm happy where I am today."

As Ruzic's ranking has risen, her strategy has been to enter WTA 1000 qualifying draws where possible in order to get used to the environment. Last year, she qualified for four WTA 1000 main draws and won rounds in Rome, Montreal, Beijing and Wuhan.

"You need to adjust and get to know all the players, all the sides, all the facilities because it's new to you," she said.

As a hard-hitting player who enjoys going for fast-paced winners, Ruzic has found her greatest success to date on the tour's fastest courts.

"Here is really fast," she said about Dubai with approval. "I think maybe the fastest on tour."

Tennis won Ruzic's heart over karate

At home, Ruzic loves nothing more than hanging out with her pets -- she has a poodle named Abby, along with several cats -- or enjoying the café culture of her hometown of Cakovec in northern Croatia. (Her preferred order is a flat white with oat milk.) But another childhood passion could have set her life on a very different course.

"I was two times national champion in karate," she revealed. "When I was 12, 13 -- two times in a row. And then I had to pick between tennis and karate.

"Tennis was my first love, I started doing that first. And then in the second or third grade of middle school, I started doing karate. That was more like fun at first, but then it got serious when I went to tournaments and stuff.

"But I think my love for tennis was much more there. So that's why I chose tennis."