No 3 seed Iva Jovic leaned on what she calls a \u201cgoldfish memory\u201d to pull through the biggest moments and book her place in the semifinals of the ASB Classic, defeating Belgian qualifier Sofia Costoulas 6-2 7-6(6) in Friday\u2019s quarterfinal.<\/p>\n
Jovic looked on course for a routine straight-sets victory after taking the first set 6-2, but the 20-year-old Costoulas refused to go away.<\/p>\n
The Belgian qualifier lifted her level in the second set and even served for it, only for Jovic to break back and force a tiebreak. There, the American teenager again had to dig deep, recovering from a 4-0 deficit to close out the match.<\/p>\n
Asked what proved decisive, Jovic pointed to her willingness to stay on the front foot in difficult conditions.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe key was just being aggressive,\u201d Jovic said. \u201cShe wasn\u2019t missing a lot. She was playing with a lot of spin, a lot of shape.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I really had to win every point out there and just moving my feet in the wind. It\u2019s tricky, it\u2019s swirling in all different directions, so it was hard for me to find my footing at times, but I\u2019m glad I was able to do it in the end.\u201d<\/p>\n
What pleased her most, though, was her resilience when momentum threatened to swing.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was most pleased with the fight, the reset,\u201d Jovic said. \u201cThere were a couple good games, and then I would throw in a couple sloppy errors. So I\u2019m glad that I was able to bring it back just in time.\u201d<\/p>\n
That ability to step up under pressure was on full display late in the match, as it was when she beat Sara Bejlek 7-6 6-4 in the second round.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I feel that my back\u2019s against the wall, I kick it up a gear,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I\u2019m working on trying to get that gear all the time so that I don\u2019t get myself in those positions in the first place. That\u2019s what me and my coach have been talking about, just trying to keep that intensity throughout the whole time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Underlying it all, Jovic believes, is her mindset of quickly letting go of mistakes.<\/p>\n
\u201cI try to have a little bit of a goldfish memory,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s really one point at a time, and I\u2019ve turned around many matches, and I\u2019ve had matches turned against me many times. So I know that every little point, every little fight, can make a difference. That\u2019s what I was able to do in the tiebreak.\u201d<\/p>\n
She expanded on the idea, noting that perfection is impossible in tennis.<\/p>\n
\u201cTennis is a sport where you lose a lot of points, and you really can\u2019t be perfect,\u201d Jovic said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo you have to forget about the sloppy, silly things that you\u2019ve done and just focus on the next point, because that\u2019s really all you can control.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"No 3 seed Iva Jovic leaned on what she calls a \u201cgoldfish memory\u201d to pull through the biggest…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":360501,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-360500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=360500"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360500\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/360501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=360500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=360500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=360500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}