After more than three hours of relentlessly pushing each other around the court, Iva Jovic outlasted Alexandra Eala 7-5, 3-6, 7-5 to book a spot in the US Open fourth round, the farthest she’s ever gone at her home Slam.<\/p>\n
After splitting the first two sets, Eala broke in the first game of the third and consolidated to take the early 2-0 lead. Jovic broke back two games later, and from there it was a battle of superb shot-making, stellar defense, ferocious ball striking and extended rallies, the momentum shifting back in forth in front of an enthusiastic Arthur Ashe Stadium crowd that was pro-Eala for the majority of the match, but seemingly behind both players equally by the end of it.<\/p>\n
After a Jovic double fault gave the break back in the decider, she held at love for a commanding 4-2 lead.<\/p>\n
It would not hold. Jovic won the next game after two deuces, and then tied the match with a pinpoint winner off Eala’s serve. After a running forehand volley winner gave Jovic a 5-4 lead, she earned her first match point in the next game, a backhand that found the net.\u00a0<\/p>\n
After Eala held, Jovic took the lead back, 6-5, with an ace at 40-15.<\/p>\n
In the final game, on Jovic’s second match point, Eala hit a forehand into the net and the 18-year-old American fell to the ground in relief and exhaustion. When she got up, Eala was already on her side of the court for the congratulatory post-match hug.<\/p>\n
Jovic will play former US Open champion Coco Gauff next for a spot in the quarterfinals. Earlier in the day, Gauff beat Cristina Bucsa in straight sets to reach the Round of 16 in New York for the fifth consecutive year.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After more than three hours of relentlessly pushing each other around the court, Iva Jovic outlasted Alexandra Eala…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":66765,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[33,463],"class_list":["post-66764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-us-open","tag-text","tag-us-open"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66764\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}