Back on grass, two-time Wimbledon finalist Ons Jabeur is thriving again. The Tunisian scored her first Top 5 win in nearly two years with a 6-1, 6-3 defeat of No. 4 seed Jasmine Paolini in the Berlin Tennis Open second round.

Jabeur had struggled with the Italian in their most recent meetings, coming out on the losing side of the last three (including one via retirement in Miami this year). But her last victory over Paolini, in the first round of Eastbourne 2023, was also on grass, and she has now won both of their encounters on the surface.

The result was Jabeur’s first Top 5 win since Wimbledon 2023, where she defeated four consecutive Grand Slam champions — Bianca Andreescu, Petra Kvitova, Elena Rybakina and Aryna Sabalenka — to reach the final. It also marks the first time she has won consecutive matches since February.

The 2022 champion in Berlin, Jabeur has also delivered a more authoritative scoreline with each round this week. In her first qualifying round, she had to save two match points to overcome Elsa Jacquemot 4-6, 7-5, 7-6(7), and then she lost her second qualifying round 6-1, 3-6, 6-0 to Wang Xinyu. However, after receiving a lucky loser spot, Jabeur has not dropped a set in the main draw so far.

Jabeur advances to her fourth quarterfinal of the year — but has lost her last eight matches in that round (plus a walkover at Zhengzhou 2023), stretching back to her most recent title at Ningbo 2023. She will bid to snap that streak against either Diana Shnaider or Marketa Vondrousova.

Earlier, No. 8 seed Paula Badosa also reached her fourth quarterfinal of 2025 after defeating Emma Navarro 7-6(2), 6-3. Badosa led 5-2 in the first set, only for Navarro to strike back with a four-game run to lead 6-5. However, the Spaniard resumed control in the tiebreak and sustained her level in the second set, firing a series of booming backhands to stay on the front foot.

Badosa bests Navarro in Berlin to reach fourth quarterfinal of 2025

Aces and drop shots key for Jabeur: Jabeur’s serve was the foundation of her 1-hour, 16-minute victory. She fired eight aces, won 83% of her first-serve points and only faced one break point, at 1-1 in the second set. She snuffed that out with an ace, and added another pair to hold that game.

With her service games under control, Jabeur unleashed her creativity on return. The first game alone — a nine-deuce, 12-minute tussle — saw her come up with both a blocked backhand return winner that landed right in the corner, and a drop shot return that foiled Paolini completely. Jabeur eventually broke on her sixth break point.

Later in the match, Jabeur even delivered the rarely-seen combination of a drop shot return followed by a net rush and volley winner. In total, she won seven out of eight points at net, and tallied 24 winners to 13 unforced errors.

Last year’s Wimbledon finalist Paolini, playing her first grass-court match of the season, only found her own rhythm intermittently. The 29-year-old committed 24 unforced errors to only nine winners.