The youngest player in the Top 100, 18-year-old Iva Jovic, dealt out the biggest upset of the tournament so far with a 6-2, 7-6(3) third-round defeat of No. 7 seed Jasmine Paolini.<\/p>\n
The result put No. 29 seed Jovic into the second week of a major for the first time at just her sixth attempt. It’s also her first win over a Top 10 player in four meetings. Two of the teenager’s three previous losses had come against Paolini, at Indian Wells and the US Open last year.<\/p>\n
Australian Open:\u00a0Scores<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Draws<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Order of play<\/a><\/p>\n “I’ve been wanting this one for a while now,” Jovic said in her on-court interview. “Had a couple of tough losses. I’m so happy to get through that barrier and get that win today.”<\/p>\n After dominating a 37-minute first set against an over-pressing Paolini — the Italian tallied 13 unforced errors and just four winners in the opener — Jovic had to battle hard in the second. Two-time major finalist Paolini adjusted her tactics, pumping high balls to Jovic’s backhand and extending the rallies. Jovic served for the match twice at 5-4 and 6-5, but was unable to close the deal.<\/p>\n But despite those setbacks, it was younger player who got on the front foot in an impeccable tiebreak, taking the lead with sweetly-timed backhands down the line and reaching match point with a bold return winner — her 20th of the match.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n “I tried to focus on what I was doing earlier in the match,” Jovic said. “Being really aggressive and controlling the play. I think when I served for the match, I got a little too passive — so I told myself to go out swinging and it helped in the tiebreak.”<\/p>\n The result continues a rapid rise for Jovic, who was ranked No. 191 this time last year. She captured her first title on the WTA Tour Driven by Mercedes-Benz in Guadalajara last September, and started 2026 in fine form by reaching the Auckland semifinals and Hobart final. Her record this year is already 10-2, and she’ll have the opportunity to extend that further against Yulia Putintseva in the fourth round.<\/p>\n More to come…<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The youngest player in the Top 100, 18-year-old Iva Jovic, dealt out the biggest upset of the tournament…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":424796,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428,1959],"class_list":["post-424795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-text"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=424795"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424795\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/424796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=424795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=424795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=424795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}