Elise Mertens is a tennis player from Belgium, winner of twelve WTA tournaments. In addition, in 2018 she became a semi-finalist of the Australian Open (this is one of the so-called Grand Slam tournaments) in singles. In general, according to the results of 2018, Mertens was recognized as the 13th racket of the world among women.
Junior level performances
Elise Mertens was born in the Belgian city of Leuven on November 19, 1995. Her mother is Lilian, she is a teacher by profession. His father, Guido Mertens, is engaged in the manufacture of furniture.
Already in the junior years (juniors are understood as athletes and female athletes under 18) Mertens took part in international competitions, where she proved herself as a promising tennis player. She showed the best results at the junior level in 2012 and 2013. During this period, Elise had a chance to play in the semifinals of the European Championship and in the quarterfinals of the junior Grand Slam in singles.
And in the doubles category, in these years she managed to reach the semifinals of the US Open Championship (US Open), as well as to win the champion's award at a major tournament in Mexico.
In April 2013, the Belgian was in seventh position in the junior world ranking. Unfortunately, she did not succeed in leading this rating or rising at least one line higher.
Career Mertens from 2015 to the present
In big adult sports, Elise Mertens announced herself at the 2015 Copa Colsanitas Tournament in Colombia. There she (together with her partner Nastya Kolar) managed to gain a number of victories and advance quite far along the tournament bracket.
Another important achievement of Eliza Mertens was the participation in the ASB Classic Championship, held in 2016 in New Zealand, Auckland. In this championship, she fought for prizes in doubles (her partner was another Belgian An-Sophie Mesto).
In 2017, Mertens significantly added: she was the first to manage to enter the TOP-50 of the world ranking. In many ways, this was made possible thanks to success in small tournaments. Especially striking was her performance at the international tournament in Hobart (Tasmania, Australia). Having passed the qualification round and hitting the main draw, the Belgian confidently defeated one opponent after another. And in the final battle, where she was opposed by the experienced Romanian Monica Niculescu, Elise was also stronger.
Further, Eliza made her way to the WTA tournament semifinals four more times - in Istanbul, New Haven, Bostad and Luxembourg. And at a tournament in Chinese Beijing, Mertens for the first time in her biography beat a tennis player from the top ten in the ranking - Slovak Dominik Tsibulkova.
At the beginning of 2018, Mertens again became the winner of the tournament in Hobart. Then, at the Australian Open, Eliza made it to the semifinals, where she still lost to Danish Carolina Wozniacki. This is currently the Mertens record for Grand Slam tournaments. In addition, during the year, Elise won two more WTA tournaments - in Lugano and Rabat. Such successes ultimately allowed the Belgian to reach 13th position in the world ranking.
It is worth mentioning another, very recent achievement of Elise. In February 2019, she won for the first time in her career a Premier tournament in Doha, Qatar. Her rival in the final match was Romanian Simone Halep. And this match was quite difficult for Elise: the Belgian lost the first set (3: 6), but prevailed in the second and third (6: 4, 6: 3).
