At first glance, Tereza Valentova’s transition from a standout junior career to the Hologic WTA Tour appears seamless. The 2024 Roland Garros girls’ champion just 14 months ago, Valentova scored a milestone win on home soil at the Livesport Prague Open on Wednesday, upsetting No. 2 seed Rebecca Sramkova 7-6(1), 7-5 after saving two set points in the opener.
Prague: Scores | Draws | Order of play
The result is her first Top 50 win and it puts her into her first tour-level quarterfinal, extending her 2025 record at all levels to 38-8. Valentova, 18, started the year by winning the ITF W75 in Porto, but as she’s moved up the levels, her rate of wins has only increased.
In the past two months, she qualified and made the second round at Roland Garros on her Grand Slam debut, falling 6-2, 6-4 to eventual champion Coco Gauff. Valentova followed that by collecting her first two WTA 125 titles, in Grado (on clay) and, last week, in Porto (on hard courts).
Valentova is now on a seven-match winning streak and has the chance to extend it further when she takes on lucky loser Jessika Ponchet in Thursday’s quarterfinals. Victory in that match would guarantee her Top 100 debut next week.
Behind the scenes, Valentova has had to navigate several tribulations that she feels have only made her stronger — injuries, coaching issues and baptisms of fire on the big stage. Get to know her story here:
“I didn’t look at them even once — I was really proud of myself for that”
On Valentova’s tour-level debut in May, she took on of the toughest tasks in tennis, a Roland Garros match against a home player in the cauldron of an outside court. She faced Chloe Paquet and a raucous French crowd to win what she describes as “one of the most mental matches I’ve ever played,” coming from 5-2 down in the third set to win 4-6, 6-3, 7-5.
“I learned I can play against myself, against her and against a really, really big crowd at the same time,” Valentova said in an interview with wtatennis.com. “I was expecting she would have many people cheering for her, but I wasn’t expecting that. There were guys from a football team and they were singing everything. When I was going for the towel, one guy was screaming at me from half a meter away.
“I didn’t look at them, not even once. I was really proud of myself for that.”
In Wimbledon qualifying a month later, Valentova had to draw on the same focus during a 3-6 6-4, 6-3 second-round win over Lucrezia Stefanini during which the Italian’s supporters ratcheted up the volume as the match progressed.
“I got angry — in a healthy way,” she told Czech press. “At her, and at her team. I felt like there were some moments that were completely unnecessary. I needed to calm myself down, and get properly fired up. Balls started landing in, I calmed down, and started playing better.”
This time last year, Valentova didn’t know if she would play tennis again
Valentova’s breakthrough has arguably been delayed by a year. In the first six months of 2024, she compiled a 30-2 record in ITF tournaments, including five titles, as well as winning Roland Garros juniors. She had been looking forward to bringing her momentum into her WTA main-draw debut in Prague this time last year — only for injury to strike. A stress fracture in Valentova’s hip would sideline her for three months.
“It was pretty bad and I didn’t know if I would play tennis again,” she said.
Worse than the injury, though, was how those around her dealt with it. Diagnosis was slow, and Valentova’s doctors blamed her old physical trainer and coach for the uncertainty. But a year on, she feels she’s in a better place all round for the experience.
She knows her body better, and knows what the warning signs are: “Next time, it won’t get that bad,” she said. Her unexpected free time meant that her school grades improved, not least due to her increased interest in her favorite subject, anatomy and biology.
“Pretty close to my heart,” Valentova said jokingly.
She also reconfigured her team. The problems hadn’t just been injury-related — her former coach had been a hard taskmaster, and despite her junior success, Valentova hadn’t truly felt happy.
“I was crying a lot at tournaments and it was pretty tough,” she said. “It was bad for my mental side.”
New coach Libor Salaba, with whom Valentova has worked for the past five months, has shown her that she can improve her tennis in a more positive atmosphere.
“Now, I can be chill on court,” she said. “He’s teaching me good things and he’s really nice — I’m glad he has that personality.”
Valentova converted different Grand Slam experiences into WTA 125 titles
After Roland Garros, Valentova was on a high. Though she’d fallen to Gauff, whom she’d only ever seen on TV before, getting to play the World No. 2 on Court Suzanne-Lenglen was a “life experience” for her, and she had not felt overmatched.
“It showed me I can play with the top players, because I don’t think I played my best and I was still keeping with her,” Valentova said. “A lot of experience I can take to maybe another meeting with her.”
She’d intended to go straight to grass after that, having been granted a last-minute wild card for ‘s-Hertogenbosch — only to find, while packing for a flight to the Netherlands the next day, that she’d entered the simultaneous WTA 125 in Grado some weeks before, and forgotten to withdraw. Valentova had to cancel the wild card and, with it, her chances of playing on grass before Wimbledon — but she made up for it in style by sweeping to the Grado title.
“In the first match I wasn’t even nervous, because I was really confident in myself,” Valentova said. “That was the first time that ever happened to me.”
Three weeks later, Valentova emerged from her Wimbledon debut in a very different state of mind. She had failed to qualify for the main draw in the most heartbreaking of ways, losing a 5-1 third-set lead and falling 7-6(1), 2-6, 7-6[7] to Anastasia Zakharova. “The pain is indescribable,” she told Czech press that week.
“I cried a lot for many days,” Valentova recalled after her first-round win in Prague. “It was really tough for me mentally.”
What she needed after that was a hard reset to clear her head. She found it in Porto, where she put together a dominant run to another WTA 125 title, conceding just 23 games and no sets in five matches. The Wimbledon loss has been shaken off, and not even a cancelled flight that meant she only landed in Prague on Monday has affected her.
Valentova showed her competitive spirit at an early age
Some of Valentova’s earliest childhood memories are of watching her father, Marcel Valenta — a keen tennis player who competed at European level — practice on the tennis courts near their home in Prague. At three years old, Valentova wanted nothing more than to join him — but not just to get on court.
“I wanted to beat him!” she said. “I was trying to practise with him every time for that.”
It took over a decade, but Valentova managed to score a victory over Marcel a few years ago — and she’s not letting anything dim her satisfaction at the result.
“He has some excuses,” she said dismissively. “I told him, ‘Why do you have excuses?'”
It wasn’t the only sport the young Tereza tried — she also played basketball for three years, as well as gymnastics and horse riding. Her mother, Jitka Janackova, was a sprint canoeist who competed at the Olympic Games twice, at Barcelona 1992 and Atlanta 1996, and tried to steer the young Tereza into the water after noting her unusual aptitude.
“When you do canoeing the first time, you will fall in the water,” Valentova said. “Every single time. But I didn’t, and she was quite impressed.”
But to no avail. Tennis was Valentova’s first love, and it’s remained so to this day.
“It’s in my heart,” she said with a smile.