Daria Kasatkina admits she held back tears and dealt with severe nerves during an agonising three-set loss at the Brisbane International.<\/p>\n
The 17-year-old joined fellow Australians Kimberly Birrell and Olivia Gadecki as first-round victors on Monday in the Australian Open lead-up event.<\/p>\n
Jones, ranked 147 in the world, hit winners from both sides but showed awareness with drop shots and overheads to outsmart Maria, who is 21 years her senior.<\/p>\n
The daughter of Olympic triathlon silver medallist Loretta Harrop, Gold Coast-born Jones will face world number 17 Liudmila Samsonova in the second round.<\/p>\n
“Her [Maria’s] game was a bit tricky but I’m so happy I got it done, I’m super happy with how I played tonight,” said Jones, who has an Australian Open wildcard slot.<\/p>\n
“This is one of the best crowds I’ve ever played with. I’m so excited.”<\/p>\n
![\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/3e27860f6224196b17391e0d265b7448.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Kimberly Birrell is looking to emulate last year’s run to the quarterfinals. (Getty Images: Albert Perez)<\/p>\n
Birrell had earlier got her summer off to a flying start.<\/p>\n
Looking to emulate her quarterfinal run at the tournament last year, the Queenslander posted an emotional 6-4, 3-6, 6-3 win over Slovak world number 71 Rebecca \u0160ramkov\u00e1.<\/p>\n
“I probably sound like a broken record, but just to get to play a tournament so close to where I grew up \u2026 I know these corridors and these courts very well,” Birrell said.<\/p>\n
“I was a little bit more nervous today than I have been in previous years, especially because of how well I played here last year.<\/p>\n
“I was just feeling a little bit more of those emotions. Sometimes I like to lean into it and try to use it to my advantage, and I probably just let it out at the end.”<\/p>\n
ABC Sport will have live coverage of the Australian Open from January 18.<\/p>\n
Birrell’s win set up a second-round meeting with world number three Amanda Anisimova.<\/p>\n
Compatriot Gadecki, ranked 52 in the world, quickly joined Birrell in the second round, defeating American Ann Li 6-4, 6-4.<\/p>\n
Gadecki will meet 18-year-old world number nine Mirra Andreeva in the next round.<\/p>\n
AAP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rising Australian tennis star Emerson Jones has claimed an upset win over a top-50 opponent at the Brisbane…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":393910,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[64,63,6571,178628,66054,151677,208978,85,747],"class_list":{"0":"post-393909","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-australian-open","11":"tag-brisbane-international","12":"tag-emerson-jones","13":"tag-kimberly-birrell","14":"tag-olivia-gadecki","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=393909"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393909\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/393910"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=393909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=393909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=393909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}