In June, Priscilla Hon led Viktoriya Tomova 7-5 3-0 in the first round of Berlin qualifying before losing the match in a final-set tiebreak.
The result profoundly impacted how she approached subsequent matches in a season that has proved transformational.
“I was kind of stuck in the big points. Like, do I play safe, and wait until they miss?” Hon recalled of her mentality at the time, in an interview on The Sit-Down podcast.
“It’s such a thin line, where you commit to it and go after it, but there’s a higher risk of missing. Or you’re going and just putting the ball in so it's on their racquet and you kind of go from there.
“What I learned from that match was I need to stop playing so safe. So that’s what helped me qualify at Wimbledon.”
> PODCAST: Listen to Priscilla Hon on The Sit-Down
Less than two weeks later, Hon progressed to the final round of Wimbledon qualifying, faced Canadian phenom Victoria Mboko, stared down five match points, and won the battle. The result propelled her into the main draw at the All England Club for the first time at age 27.
“[On] those match points, I just went after it, I kept playing how I would play any other point,” she explained. “I just kept moving forward, I kept being aggressive on those points, and it paid off.”
Hon later qualified at the US Open and advanced to the third round, having upstaged 17th seed Liudmila Samsonova to achieve her best result at a major. She then won her first matches at WTA 1000 level in Beijing, where she outplayed 22nd seed Jelena Ostapenko and came within a set of the fourth round against 16th-ranked Belinda Bencic.
This big-stage success meant the Queenslander was set for her top-100 debut after the China Open rankings release in what she described as an “up-and-down journey” on the professional circuit.
"I mean, it’s huge,” Hon said of her ranking milestone. “Obviously I want to be way [higher] than 100. I tried to kind of [treat] it as a milestone but not like it’s everything.
“There’s obviously people that have always believed in me, thinking I can do way more, and I feel like I'm finally starting to live up to that. And also a lot of people that doubted me, so being able to prove them wrong, as well, is just the best feeling.”
Hon’s talent was obvious as far back as her early days on the Australian Pro Tour, where 10 years ago she won her first professional title at the ITF 15K event in Mornington.
After she ended 2016 at world No.535, she improved her year-end ranking each year and finished 2019 at No.123, a season during which she made her Billie Jean King Cup debut for Australia and won her first Grand Slam main-draw match at Roland Garros. She continued her upward trend and reached the second round at Australian Open 2020 – her first Grand Slam singles win on home soil – before the pandemic hit.
It was during this time she suffered a hip injury that sidelined her for more than a year, and she was in hospital during the 2023 off-season with appendicitis while preparing for the Australian summer.
She was also forced to contend with the death of her long-time coach, Anthony Richardson, whom she described as “a second dad to me growing up”.
“That’s the thing about tennis – it’s a long journey. You start from such a young age and there’s always setbacks, and every single player has them,” she said.
“The one thing you really learn is to never give up. There’s always doubts. There’s a lot of negative thoughts in general in life. But I feel like in sport you have to keep backing yourself and keep moving forward, because if you don’t, then your career is over.
“I feel like tennis has really brought that in me … you just keep building resilience every single day. And so just having all these setbacks, I guess, has made getting here – or hopefully more – even sweeter.
“I’m [now] playing way more aggressive, and I feel like I did that a few years ago, where I was going up, and then Covid and everything, and then I feel like I really lost my way. I started playing so defensive and I wasn’t happy with the way I was playing at all.
“I feel like I’ve unlocked a little new part of my brain a little bit.” At the time of writing, Hon had won 37 singles matches in 2025. There have been seasons during which she’s won more – in 2022, she won 45 – but it’s the nature of the wins, and the level at which they’ve been achieved, that sets this year apart.
It was also at the US Open Hon learned the value of another lesson – not to let her emotions become overwhelming.
“When I do let my emotions get too high, and I get too happy because I achieved something, like I lose the next match or my energy just goes down. So I was trying to really contain it until I obviously lost [to Ann Li in the third round] and I could look back on it and be like, ‘damn, that was pretty cool’.
Since proving to herself she could match her tennis-playing talent with week-to-week consistency, Hon hasn’t looked back.
“I’ve been working a lot on the mental side of things and just trying to keep it way more present. I feel like now that I have been able to play a bunch of matches, kept my level, [I’m] really happy with and confident in the way I am playing.
“That’s kind of what I mean by ‘unlocked’, because I feel I’ve shown myself that I can do this. And so now I feel like ... I’m really excited to see where I can go.”
This story first appeared in Australian Tennis Magazine and has been adapted for online publication.
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