Former Wimbledon champion and Sky Sports analyst Marion Bartoli admits pushing Harriet Dart "beyond her limits" with the Brit winning her first WTA title at the Guangzhou Open in China at the weekend. Dart, playing in her first Tour-level final, edged a thrilling match against 18-year-old Lilli Tagger from Austria 4-6 6-3 6-4. The 30-year-old from Hampstead returned back into the top 100 of the WTA rankings and has a strong chance of automatic qualification into the main draw of the Australian Open, which runs from January 11-31.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player Bartoli, who started working with Dart on a part-time basis since the start of the year, discussed her coaching philosophy and why she thought it was only a matter of time before the Brit would go on and make her mark. Speaking to Sky Sports, the 2013 Wimbledon winner said: "I thought Harriet could do extremely well after the US open because everything we were working on in her game was starting to come to life more and more. "Now, to tell you she could win a title, it was not my obsession.
For me, as a coach, that's not how I function. Everything has to follow a certain process of improvements. Once those improvements are made, that's when the results start to come.
That's my whole philosophy behind my coaching system. "We had a very strong week of training in Dubai, and when I hugged her at the end of her last practice with me before she left for Osaka, I told her: 'You are playing amazing tennis, believe in yourself and keep fighting!' "She did exactly that and so much more." After qualifying for this year's main draw, Dart defeated Tatiana Prozorova, No 2 seed Janice Tjen, No 5 seed Paula Badosa and 16-year-old wild card Sun Xinran to make her first career WTA Tour final. Before this week, her best Tour-level finish had been a semi-final run at 2024 Cluj-Napoca, losing to eventual champion Karolina Pliskova.
Dart has risen from world No 115 to 83 in the live rankings; this time last year she was ranked No 224. She reached career-high ranking of No 70 in September 2024. Bartoli began dissecting Dart's game with the Brit ranked outside the top 160 at the time.
"When she contacted me earlier this year to start a collaboration, I knew exactly what I would like her to change and improve. The problem we were both facing is the lack of time we could actually properly spend together to work on her game," said the former French Open semi-finalist and world No 7. "We started to properly do that only when we were in Florida before Cincinnati, and since then, it has been incredibly satisfying to see how quickly Harriet has been improving, taking things on board, committed fully to them and applying them in matches.
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