Jasmine Paolini is potentially just one win away from sealing her spot at the WTA Finals Riyadh after the No. 2 seed defeated Veronika Kudermetova 6-2, 7-5 in the AUX Ningbo second round.<\/p>\n
Ningbo: <\/strong>Scores<\/strong><\/a> | <\/strong>Draws<\/strong><\/a> | <\/strong>Order of play<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Paolini will need to reach the final in Ningbo this week to qualify outright. However, if No. 3 seed Elena Rybakina loses before the semifinals, Paolini would only need to make the last four to guarantee her place in Riyadh. Friday’s quarterfinals will see the Italian will take on No. 6 seed Belinda Bencic, who leads their head-to-head 2-1.<\/p>\n However, the key for Paolini is to put all those calculations out of her head. The goal of reaching the WTA Finals is the reason she’s in Ningbo, but it’s not what she’s thinking about during matches.<\/p>\n “I’m trying to focus on the court, on the next one,” Paolini said in her on-court interview. “It’s something on my mind, of course but I try to stay focused on tennis and what I have to do.”<\/p>\n Against Kudermetova, this meant consistent, controlled aggression to weather the ups and downs of her opponent’s form. Paolini landed 75% of her first serves and tallied 14 winners to 17 unforced errors. By contrast, Kudermetova’s first-serve percentage was down at 55% and her 22 winners were outweighed by 38 unforced errors.<\/p>\n Kudermetova broke first in each set — in the first game of the match, and then in a brilliant fifth game of the second set, in which she slammed four clean winners past Paolini. But both times, she immediately conceded her break lead with a rash of quick, cheap errors. Towards the end of the second set, Kudermetova came up with some clutch play to keep it close — until the final game, which saw her commit a third double fault facing a first match point.<\/p>\n “I managed to stay there every point, stay focused and try to find solutions,” said Paolini, who improved to 4-2 overall against Kudermetova and 2-0 in 2025 (following her three-set win in the Cincinnati semifinals).<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jasmine Paolini is potentially just one win away from sealing her spot at the WTA Finals Riyadh after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":504339,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4105],"tags":[79,1068,661,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-504338","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\/115384280978080457","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504338","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=504338"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504338\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/504339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=504338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=504338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=504338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}