Jasmine Paolini had to summon all of her grit to keep her hopes of qualifying for the WTA Finals Riyadh this week alive, coming through a 3-hour, 22-minute barnburner to defeat No. 6 seed Belinda Bencic 5-7, 7-5, 6-3 in the AUX Ningbo Open quarterfinals.
If Elena Rybakina loses to Ajla Tomljanovic in the last Ningbo quarterfinal on Friday, Paolini will qualify for Riyadh. If Rybakina wins, Paolini will need to defeat the Kazakhstani in the semifinals in order to seal her spot at the year-end finale.
Ningbo: Scores | Draws | Order of play
The No. 2 seed had to come from a set and a break down twice to quell Bencic, who served for the match at 5-4 in the second set. The match was the longest of Paolini’s year, ahead of her 2-hour, 47-minute loss to Amanda Anisimova in the Beijing quarterfinals, and the joint-11th longest match of the WTA season overall. It was the first time Paolini had exceeded the three-hour mark in over three years — since the 2022 Palermo quarterfinals, where she defeated Nuria Parrizas Diaz in 3 hours and 6 minutes.
Bencic had been the victor in the year’s longest match just one round previously, a 3-hour, 33-minute defeat of Yuliia Starodubtseva on Wednesday. The Swiss player required a medical time-out down 4-3 in the decider, and ended the match with her movement visibly hampered.
“One of the toughest I ever played, honestly,” Paolini said in her on-court interview. “Belinda, she’s an amazing player and a very good person. Today she deserved to win as well, so it was really tough. I’m happy I stayed there, because at the beginning I had too many mistakes. I couldn’t find my best tennis, but then I just tried to stay there every point and turn the match somehow.”
More to come…