Quote of the Day: Clara Tauson has long night of recovery after Dubai semifinal

DUBAI—Clara Tauson will spend Friday night preparing for the biggest final of her young career at the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships, and though she’ll take the court alone the Dane can count on a team of spiritual doubles partners to help ready her for the championship match on Saturday.

The 22-year-old Dane spent nearly three hours on court to continue her winning week at the WTA 1000, backing up impressive wins over world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka and Linda Noskova to hold off a late surge from No. 14 seed Karolina Muchova, defeating the 2023 Roland Garros finalist, 6-4, 6-7 (4), 6-3.

But before she can head back to the hotel and strategize for her final against No. 12 seed Mirra Andreeva, Tauson has a trip to the recovery room all lined up.

Q. What constitutes recovery at this stage of the tournament? Is it simply resting in the hotel?

CLARA TAUSON: I think I have to give the physios one big gift when I’m done here because they’ve really been working with me since the first round. They’ve been helping me and trying to keep me together. We’ll do that again today and tomorrow.

They’re going to get everything. They deserve everything if I win.

“I’m barely one body anymore,” added Tauson, who has won five matches in five days. “I’ve never played so many matches in a row, so we’ll see how I wake up tomorrow. I don’t think it’s going to be great, but I’m going to try my best to keep it together in the final.”

With the clock about to strike 11PM local time, Tauson was resigned to be on site for a few more hours in order to ensure she’s match ready tomorrow.

“What time is it?” she asked as the post-match press conference concluded. “Oh no, I won’t be sleeping great. I’ll try to sleep as long as I can tomorrow but I have a few hours of treatment and then recovery that I have to do after this. It won’t be a great night of sleep.”

We’ll be setting our alarms to to watch Tauson take on Andreeva Saturday night at 7PM local time.