Tatiana Prozorova had already shown she could handle a comeback. On Thursday, she did it again — and with far bigger stakes.
The World No. 180 rallied past No. 3 seed Alexandra Eala 4-6, 7-5, 6-3 in 3 hours and 9 minutes at the Singapore Tennis Open, advancing to her first WTA quarterfinal and claiming the first Top 20 win of her career. Prozorova entered the match with only three prior tour-level wins, so the result was a major step forward for the 22-year-old.
A match Prozorova had to keep surviving
Prozorova was not in control for much of the night. She came back from a set and a break down in her first-round match against Sofia Costoulas, then faced another difficult situation against Eala before turning the match around.
She said she was left without many words after the win, adding, “Wow -- I just did it!” Prozorova said she believed in herself until the end, knew Eala would fight, and made the same commitment in response. “That’s what I just did, and it worked,” she said.
The win also came after a busy run of recent results. Before Thursday, Prozorova had beaten Tatjana Maria in the second round of the Manila WTA 125 event in January and picked up wins in Memphis this July.
Why the result stands out
Eala’s loss was notable in its own right. Before this match, she had not lost to a player ranked outside the Top 100 for exactly a year. Last September, she fell in the Jingshan WTA 125 semifinals to then-No. 146 Lulu Sun.
Prozorova, however, played with enough persistence to break through. She held firm in the closing stages and kept forcing the match deeper until the result turned her way. She even joked after the match that she had “ate a lot of desserts today,” suggesting the energy — or maybe the mood — helped her push through one more long battle.
For Prozorova, the immediate takeaway is simple: the comeback worked, the ranking gap did not matter, and the biggest victory of her career arrived at the Singapore Tennis Open.
