Jasmine Paolini and Emma Navarro lived up to their seeded billing at the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix on Tuesday evening, quickly picking up first-round wins at the WTA 500 indoor-clay event in Stuttgart, Germany.<\/p>\n
Stuttgart:\u00a0Draws<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>|\u00a0<\/strong>Scores<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>|<\/strong>\u00a0Order of play<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>|\u00a0<\/strong>Tournament info<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n No. 5 seed Paolini of Italy needed only 1 hour and 4 minutes to dismiss Eva Lys 6-2, 6-1 in the first match of the night session. Paolini moves one step closer to matching her quarterfinal run from last year.<\/p>\n World No. 68 Lys came into Stuttgart as the German No. 1 for the first time in her career, but that new status could only get her so far, as Paolini dominated in return games on Tuesday.<\/p>\n “[Lys] is such a nice girl, and I’m sorry [to] you guys,” Paolini apologized in her on-court interview to the German crowd, who responded with warm applause. “I have to do my job, as better as I can!”\u00a0<\/p>\n Paolini won a whopping 73 percent of points returning the Lys first serve, and the Italian was rewarded with a 6-for-8 break point conversion success rate. She improved to 2-0 against Lys (4-0 in sets).<\/p>\n World No. 6 Paolini will take on a German wild card for a second match in a row when she meets Jule Niemeier in the second round. Paolini is 2-0 against Niemeier, with both of those wins coming in 2022.<\/p>\n Later in the evening, No. 7 seed Navarro of the United States made a spectacular Stuttgart tournament debut when she swept past Brazil’s Beatriz Haddad Maia 6-3, 6-0.<\/p>\n In the 1-hour and 16-minute clash between Top 20 players, Navarro fired 24 winners to Haddad Maia’s eight. Navarro converted four of her nine break points in the match, and the American never dropped serve.<\/p>\n “I\u2019ve had a lot of long matches this year, and a lot of three-sets,” Navarro said afterwards. “To get it done a little bit quicker feels good. Proud of my form … It\u2019s my first tournament on red clay this year, so I\u2019m leaning into it and having some fun out here.”<\/p>\n Navarro puts on forehand clinic in swift Stuttgart opening win<\/p>\n Navarro had lost to Haddad Maia twice on clay last year, but it was a complete turnaround on Tuesday. The World No. 11 stays alive in her quest for her second WTA 500 title of the year: Navarro hoisted the WTA 500 Merida trophy on hard court in March.<\/p>\n Unfortunately for Haddad Maia, she has now lost nine straight matches since she claimed a spot in the third round of the 2025 Australian Open.<\/p>\n Navarro will now face a former Grand Slam champion in the second round, when she has her first career meeting with 2017 Roland Garros victor Jelena Ostapenko.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jasmine Paolini and Emma Navarro lived up to their seeded billing at the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24882,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4105],"tags":[79,1068,661,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-24881","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-tennis","10":"tag-text","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114347944472724312","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24881","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24881"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24881\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24882"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}