January 14, 2025
A trio of Top 10 players booked second-round spots at the Australian Open on Tuesday afternoon, with Elena Rybakina, Emma Navarro and Daria Kasatkina all winning their opening matches.
No.6 seed Rybakina defeated Australian 16-year-old Emerson Jones 6-1, 6-1 on Margaret Court Arena. Rybakina, the 2023 Australian Open runner-up, needed 53 minutes to best the homeland wild card.
Up-and-coming Jones is the current Junior World No.1 and earned her first career WTA Tour win last week in Adelaide over Top 40 player Wang Xinyu. But Rybakina was a bridge too far for the youngster in her Grand Slam main-draw debut.
The 2022 Wimbledon champion Rybakina slammed 26 winners, including 11 aces, past 293rd-ranked Jones. The powerful Kazakh converted five of her seven break points, while also erasing the three break points Jones had at 5-1 in the first set.
“Very happy with the performance, with the way I served also today,” Rybakina said in press. “Looking forward for the next match.”
After beating Junior World No.1 Jones, Rybakina will face Junior World No.2 Iva Jovic in the second round. Jovic, the 17-year-old American wild card, advanced to her first meeting with Rybakina after a 6-2, 6-1 first-round win over Nuria Parrizas Diaz of Spain.
Earlier on Tuesday, No.8 seed Navarro and No.9 seed Kasatkina took very different paths into the Australian Open second round.
In a clash between back-to-back NCAA singles champions, 2021 college champ Navarro (University of Virginia) defeated 2022 NCAA titlist Peyton Stearns (University of Texas) 6-7(5), 7-6(5), 7-5 in a grueling 3-hour and 20-minute affair on Rod Laver Arena.
“One of the more unique matches I’ve played in a while,” World No.8 Navarro said. “It was just relying a lot, I guess, on my grit and toughness and fight
“I just kept telling myself there at the end, ‘Make the most of the skills I have today.’ I think maybe that’s something that kind of clicked there for me at the end.”
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