Stojsavljevic, 17, is the second-lowest ranked player in a Great Britain team missing Emma Raducanu, Sonay Kartal, Katie Boulter, and Fran Jones \u2013 all of whom are ranked inside the world’s top 100 for singles.<\/p>\n
But the 2024 US Open junior champion was unfazed by her underdog status and the Australian crowd, holding her nerve to clinch the first set in a tie-break after letting a 3-1 lead slip. <\/p>\n
She later saved five break points in the penultimate game of the match before converting her first match point.<\/p>\n
“It feels amazing. I can’t believe it. I can’t even remember the last point,” Stojsavljevic said. “I had amazing support from the side and managed to get through.<\/p>\n
“Going into it, I knew she’d have the home ground. I’m grateful to the people supporting GB today.<\/p>\n
“It was a good match. We have very similar games, both quite aggressive, so I’m happy I got through it.”<\/p>\n
Dart’s meeting with world number 80 Birrell was characterised by service struggles, with no fewer than 16 breaks of serve and 27 break-point opportunities across the match.<\/p>\n
After losing the opening set 6-4, the turning point for Dart came in the fifth game of the second when she held to 15 to end a run of four consecutive dropped service games. She then won three of the next five games, including a crucial second hold, to force a deciding set.<\/p>\n
At 3-3 in the third, the 29-year-old broke Birrell for the eighth time before winning the next two game to secure the win and put Great Britain in control.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Stojsavljevic, 17, is the second-lowest ranked player in a Great Britain team missing Emma Raducanu, Sonay Kartal, Katie…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":522993,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-522992","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522992","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=522992"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522992\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/522993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=522992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=522992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=522992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}