Ajla Tomljanović

Born in Zagreb, Croatia, Ajla Tomljanovic represents Australia after first announcing her switch in nationality to Australia in 2014.

Ajla started playing tennis at six-years-old in Metalac, Croatia, following in the footsteps of her older sisters who also played tennis.

By thirteen years of age Ajla had moved to Florida to undergo more extensive training at the Evert Tennis Academy in Boca Raton.

The talented tennis player showed promise early in her career, winning the 2009 Australian Open girls' doubles title with American Christina McHale, at just sixteen-years-old. She also upset 3rd seed Agnieszka Radswanka in the third round of the French Open in 2014.

Ajla reached her maiden WTA final in Pattaya City, Thailand in 2015 but was defeated by Daniela Hantuchova.

She struggled with a shoulder injury throughout the beginning of the 2016 season and underwent surgery at the conclusion of the Australian summer, and would not return to competition for another 12 months.

A purple patch followed in 2018, making it to back-to-back semi-finals on the WTA 125k Series in early 2018. She seemed unaffected by her previous injury, making another final at the Korea Open in September. She finished the year at number 43 on the WTA rankings.

Ajla represented Australia in the Fed Cup Tournament for the first time in 2019, where the team finished as finalists, defeated by France 3-2 in the final. She also reached a then career-high ranking that year of number 39 in the world.

At Tokyo 2020 in her Olympic debut, Ajla went down in the second round of singles action to Elina Svitolina of Ukraine. A strong start was met with a Svitolina fightback, who won the match 4-6, 6-3, 6-4 and eventually the bronze medal in Japan.

In 2022, Ajla reached back-to-back quarter-finals at the final two grand slams of the calendar year. She dropped only two sets by the time she reached the quarter-finals at Wimbledon, where she was bested by no.17 seed and eventual champion Elena Rybakina. Similarly, Ajla fell in the US Open quarter-finals to Ons Jabeur, the eventual finalist of the tournament. 

Ajla reached a career-high singles ranking of 32 in April 2023, when a knee injury started to affect her season. Ajla returned with an opening round win at the US Open at the back end of 2023, only to be too sore to take to the court again in New York.

In 2024 Ajla competed in the Australian Open once again where she made the second round and took no.11 seed Jelena Ostanpenko to three sets.

Ajla Tomljanovic was excited to be officially selected for her second Olympic Team for Paris 2024 after spending most of the year to date recovering from surgery in February to remove fibroids from her uterus.

“When Tokyo ended, I remember thinking to myself I have to work really hard to make it to Paris because being at the Olympics was a dream come true and I wanted to experience it again,” Ajla said.

Her return to the women's Olympic singles tournament served up an unfavourable draw, getting US Olympic Team Flag Bearer Coco Gauff as her first round opponent. Ajla lost 6-3 6-0.

In the women’s doubles Ajla and Olivia Gadecki forced their match against Mirra Andreeva and Diana Shnaider (AIN) into a deciding super tiebreaker before falling 6-3 2-6 [10-6].