\n Rome (AFP) \u2013 Jasmine Paolini launched her Italian Open title defence on Thursday by battling back from a set down to beat France’s Leolia Jeanjean 6-7 (4\/7), 6-2, 6-4. <\/p>\n
Issued on: 07\/05\/2026 – 16:40Modified: 07\/05\/2026 – 18:17<\/p>\n
1 min Reading time\n<\/p>\n
Home hope Paolini is bidding to become the first Italian woman to retain the title in Rome, but started slowly at the Foro Italico.<\/p>\n
The world number eight turned on the afterburners after going behind following an error-strewn first set, comfortably turning around the match to secure a spot in the third round, where she will meet Elise Mertens.<\/p>\n
Paolini’s compatriot Matteo Berrettini fell at the first hurdle, 6-2, 6-3, to Alexei Popyrin, a defeat which will see the former Wimbledon finalist drop out of the top 100 in the men’s rankings.<\/p>\n
Coco Gauff, who lost to Paolini in last year’s final, made short work of Tereza Valentova in the reigning French Open champions’ opening match of the tournament.<\/p>\n
American star Gauff beat Valentova 6-3, 6-4 in one hour and 34 minutes in front of a sparsely-populated centre court, and will play one of Solana Sierra or Anhelina Kalinina in the next round.<\/p>\n
World number one and favourite for the women’s title in the Italian capital, Aryna Sabalenka will face Barbora Krejcikova in the final match of the day on centre court.<\/p>\n
Sabalenka has never won the Italian Open, with her run to the final two years ago, when she was lost to Iga Swiatek, her best result.<\/p>\n
\u00a9 2026 AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rome (AFP) \u2013 Jasmine Paolini launched her Italian Open title defence on Thursday by battling back from a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":654279,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-654278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=654278"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654278\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/654279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=654278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=654278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=654278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}