{"id":366298,"date":"2025-08-23T03:39:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-23T03:39:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/366298\/"},"modified":"2025-08-23T03:39:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-23T03:39:11","slug":"us-open-francesca-jones-qualifies-for-first-time-with-win-over-arianne-hartono","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/366298\/","title":{"rendered":"US Open: Francesca Jones qualifies for first time with win over Arianne Hartono"},"content":{"rendered":"

Less than a couple of minutes after reaching the US Open main draw for the first time, Francesca Jones rummaged in her racquet bag and grabbed her mobile phone.<\/b><\/p>\n

The 24-year-old Briton wanted to ring her parents Adele and Simon, who are back home in the UK. <\/p>\n

Why weren’t they watching their daughter in New York? Because they could not get a dog sitter.<\/p>\n

Sharing the elation of coming through three rounds of qualifying was Jones’ instant reaction to beating Dutch opponent Arianne Hartono.<\/p>\n

“My parents don’t get to travel with me everywhere so I made sure I can share those moments with them as soon as I can,” Jones told BBC Sport after sealing her place in the main draw in New York.<\/p>\n

“I want them to feel as part of it as possible, considering how much they’ve sacrificed to give me opportunities. <\/p>\n

“They’re not here because a dog sitter wasn’t available \u2013 the dogs come first!”<\/p>\n

After sealing her 6-2 6-4 victory with an ace, Jones covered her face with joy and ran over to hug the members of her team sitting courtside. <\/p>\n

Jones was born with a genetic condition<\/a> which means she has three fingers and a thumb on each hand, three toes on her right foot and four toes on her left.<\/p>\n

Doctors told the Yorkshire-born player to forget about playing tennis professionally – but she beat the odds after moving to Spain as a teenager.<\/p>\n

Learning her craft on the clay was a different path to many Britons, and her way into the US Open main draw has been typically unconventional.<\/p>\n

Jones was the top seed in the women’s qualifying draw after just falling short of the cut-off date for automatic entry.<\/p>\n

Since then, she has cracked the world’s top 100 for the first time, moving up to 86th after winning back-to-back titles on the WTA 125 tour – the rung below the main tour.<\/p>\n

“I’ve always done things differently – so why should I change now?” Jones said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Less than a couple of minutes after reaching the US Open main draw for the first time, Francesca…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":366299,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4105],"tags":[79,1068,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-366298","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-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115076003481004572","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366298","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=366298"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366298\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/366299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=366298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=366298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=366298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}