Few  tennis players have had as many nicknames as Caroline Wozniacki: Little Miss Sunshine, Woz, Caro … and not all of them were positive. 

‘The Wall’ and ‘Snoozniacki’ were aired a few times after she beat minnows 6-1, 6-1, but still managed to hit fewer winners. 

And then there was Wozzilroy, a name her boyfriend had inscribed on a wedge that he presented to her.

Digging deep
But now Clara Tauson has won her first WTA title at the age of 18 years and 76 days – just 22 days short of Wozniacki’s march, she’ll need a nickname of her own to be truly considered a big name on the tour.

Cla and Taus don’t have an instant ring to them, while Clara ‘Tornado’ Tauson and Clara ‘The Terminator’ Tauson sound better suited to snooker and darts respectively. 

Given her big wallop of a forehand, and this newspaper’s fondness for classic 1970s movies, how about ‘the Tauson Inferno’? 

Or perhaps even better, given her thunderbolt of a serve, how about a liberal pronunciation of Thor?

In top 100
Tauson ousted Viktorija Golubic 6-4, 6-1 in the final of the ATP Lyon Open, where she didn’t drop a single set, knocking out the world numbers 33, 73, 81, 105 and 130 on the way.

The win saw the 2019 junior Australian Open champion jump from 139 to 96 in the world rankings. 

And that’s interesting because the top 104 in the world automatically qualify for the Grand Slam tournaments – the next being the French Open in May, which like the ATP Lyon Open is contested on clay.