It’s hard enough to play on Centre Court at the All England Club, with the world watching, for a spot in the Wimbledon quarterfinals.<\/p>\n
Add to that the pressure of playing in front of 20-time Grand Slam singles champion Roger Federer, and for Jasmine Paolini it was almost too much to handle.<\/p>\n
It turned out not to be, however, as the former Wimbledon finalist edged Filipina sensation Alexandra Eala 6-4, 4-6, 6-3 on Monday to advance to the last eight in London.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Addressing the crowd in her on-court interview after the match, an overjoyed Paolini expressed what it meant to play in front of Federer, who was taking in the match from the Royal Box.<\/p>\n
“I want to thank you, Roger Federer, because he’s my idol,” Paolini said, to which Federer showed his appreciation and gratitude. “It was tough. I was like, during the match, ‘Please stay focused. Stay focused. Don’t think about [him being] here.’<\/p>\n
“I was watching all the finals and all the tournaments he was playing here, so it’s an amazing feeling. But I would like to thank everybody who is here.”<\/p>\n
Paolini, who has fallen to No. 17 in the PIF WTA Rankings after beginning the year in the Top 10, came into this tournament with a subpar 11-12 record in WTA Tour Driven by Mercedes-Benz play. This is just her second quarterfinal appearance in 12 tournaments this year, not including the United Cup and Billie Jean King Cup, which are team competitions.<\/p>\n
It’s her second trip to the Wimbledon quarterfinals, and she’s the first Italian woman ever to reach that benchmark.<\/p>\n
Paolini will next play Marta Kostyuk, who beat American Ashlyn Krueger earlier on Monday, for a spot in the semifinals. Kostyuk has been one of the hottest players on the WTA Tour since the start of the Clay-Court Swing, winning 20 of her last 21 matches and a pair of titles in Rouen and Madrid. She’s into her first Wimbledon quarterfinal.<\/p>\n
They’ve played three times before, but not since 2023. Paolini leads the head-to-head 2-1, though they’ve never played on grass.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It’s hard enough to play on Centre Court at the All England Club, with the world watching, for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":528148,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[85,46,105,4277],"class_list":["post-528147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-sports","tag-text"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=528147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528147\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/528148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=528147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=528147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=528147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}