{"id":712760,"date":"2026-07-27T00:23:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-27T00:23:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/712760\/"},"modified":"2026-07-27T00:23:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-27T00:23:08","slug":"francesca-jones-briton-defends-challenger-title-in-palermo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/712760\/","title":{"rendered":"Francesca Jones: Briton defends Challenger title in Palermo"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Britain&#8217;s Francesca Jones made it back-to-back wins on the Challenger Tour by successfully defending her title at the Palermo Ladies Open.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The top seed beat Fiona Ferro 6-0 4-6 7-6 (8-6) in two hours and 43 minutes.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Jones, who had dropped one set all tournament, took the opener in just 21 minutes.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The 25-year-old then fought back from 3-0 down to lead 4-3 in the second, but Ferro reeled off three straight games to level the match.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">A tight deciding set went all the way to a tie break, where the French seventh seed spurned match point at 6-5, allowing Jones to close out victory.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">It was her fourth career win on the Challenger Tour and second in eight days, following a victory at the ATV Rome Open.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;We both deserved to win. It was a close match until the end, and we did everything we could,&#8221; said Jones, who beat Anouk Koevermans of the Netherlands to win the title in 2025.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Bradford-born Jones will rise from 113 to 110 in the WTA rankings on Monday following this success.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Britain&#8217;s Francesca Jones made it back-to-back wins on the Challenger Tour by successfully defending her title at the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":712761,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-712760","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\/712760","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=712760"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712760\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/712761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=712760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=712760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=712760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}