At Nansha International Tennis Centre in Guangzhou, Harriet Dart turned a match that was slipping away into a 3-6, 6-2, 6-4 win over Paula Badosa, reaching the second WTA Tour semi-final of her career. The British player needed two hours and 15 minutes to beat Spain’s fifth seed, who was ranked 54 places above her.
The result is a notable step for Dart, 30, who has spent most of the past two seasons outside the world’s top 100. Her previous tour semi-final came at the Transylvania Open in Cluj-Napoca, where she lost in straight sets to Karolina Pliskova. In Guangzhou, Dart came through qualifying and then beat second seed Janice Tjen before overcoming Badosa.
The quarter-final did not begin smoothly. Dart lost her opening service game, then broke back to draw level at 3-3. Badosa broke her again to move ahead 5-3 and served out the first set. The players traded breaks early in the second, but Dart found her footing and took the set 6-2.
Badosa needed two medical timeouts during the match and appeared to be struggling with the heat. In the deciding set, she saved a match point at 3-5 and then broke Dart’s serve, giving herself a chance to stay in the contest. But Badosa could not hold in the next game. Dart won it without dropping a point to seal the match.
“It was an incredible battle,” Dart said. “I really needed to hang in there during the tough moments and wait for a chance.” She added that she was excited to have another chance to compete on Saturday, saying that tennis can be stressful and that reaching the later stages of a tournament was a great opportunity.
The Guangzhou run has also brought Dart close to returning to the top 100. That could help her enter the Australian Open main draw in January without having to play qualifying rounds. Dart reached a career-high ranking of 70 in 2024, shortly after making the third round at Wimbledon, and her recent results suggest she is building momentum again.
A partnership with former Wimbledon champion Marion Bartoli has been part of that progress. The two live near each other and began working together earlier this year in an informal coaching arrangement. Dart has said she values Bartoli’s experience, and that the French former world number seven still “hits a good ball” in practice.
Since Wimbledon, Dart has won 17 of 22 tour-level matches on hard courts. Her season record on the WTA Tour is 21 wins from 32 matches, the best winning rate of her career. On Saturday, she will face either American Claire Liu or 16-year-old Chinese wildcard Sun Xinran for a place in the final. For a player who has fought her way through qualifying, the semi-final offers a chance to turn a strong second half of the season into an even bigger breakthrough.