{"id":607368,"date":"2026-09-06T05:20:21","date_gmt":"2026-09-06T05:20:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/607368\/"},"modified":"2026-09-06T05:20:21","modified_gmt":"2026-09-06T05:20:21","slug":"jovic-puts-friendship-with-eala-on-hold-to-win-three-hour-battle-at-us-open","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/607368\/","title":{"rendered":"Jovic puts friendship with Eala on hold to win three-hour battle at US Open"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text-primary article-summary font-tertiary-body-baseline-regular\" data-testid=\"article-paragraph-annotation-test-id\">NEW YORK, Sept 5 &#8211; Home hope Iva Jovic and Alexandra Eala of the Philippines put their friendship aside for three hours at the U.S. Open on Saturday before the 18-year-old American prevailed 7-5 3-6 7-5 at Arthur Ashe stadium to reach the fourth round.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text-primary font-tertiary-body-baseline-regular\" data-testid=\"article-paragraph-annotation-test-id\">The two rising stars and close friends had already shared the court in New York during Fan Week when they teamed up with their fathers for a light-hearted doubles hit.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text-primary font-tertiary-body-baseline-regular\" data-testid=\"article-paragraph-annotation-test-id\">There was little room for sentiment once the match began on Saturday, however.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text-primary font-tertiary-body-baseline-regular\" data-testid=\"article-paragraph-annotation-test-id\">Jovic edged a tight opening set but Eala responded in the second, the 21-year-old raising her level to force a decider.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text-primary font-tertiary-body-baseline-regular\" data-testid=\"article-paragraph-annotation-test-id\">The final set again featured momentum swings before Jovic closed out the victory to extend her record against Eala to 3-0.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text-primary font-tertiary-body-baseline-regular\" data-testid=\"article-paragraph-annotation-test-id\">Jovic&#8217;s victory was a welcome bright spot on a difficult day for American tennis, with Taylor Fritz, Madison Keys and Amanda Anisimova among the home players eliminated.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text-primary font-tertiary-body-baseline-regular\" data-testid=\"article-paragraph-annotation-test-id\">Jovic, ranked a career-high 14th, had never gone beyond the second round in two previous U.S. Open appearances.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text-primary font-tertiary-body-baseline-regular\" data-testid=\"article-paragraph-annotation-test-id\">Her victory sets up an all-American fourth-round clash with fourth seed Coco Gauff, who advanced earlier on Saturday by beating Spain&#8217;s Cristina Bucsa. REUTERS<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK, Sept 5 &#8211; Home hope Iva Jovic and Alexandra Eala of the Philippines put their friendship&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":607369,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[85,46,105],"class_list":["post-607368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607368","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=607368"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607368\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/607369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=607368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=607368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=607368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}