Paula Badosa of Spain eked out a 4-6, 6-2, 7-6(2) victory over German qualifier Anna-Lena Friedsam in the opening round of the Internazionali BNL d'Italia, setting up a marquee second-round clash against No.4 seed Ons Jabeur.

"[Jabeur is] an amazing player, it’s going to be a battle like always," Badosa said, looking ahead. "Really looking forward to that. I respect her a lot, and I hope it’s going to be a good match and people have fun."

Here are some takeaways surrounding Badosa's late-night win over Friedsam:

Dictating by the end: Badosa needed to battle for 2 hours and 37 minutes before overcoming World No.88 Friedsam in their first meeting. The match ended at 12:45 a.m. Thursday morning local time.

After splitting the first two sets, the players saved a combined seven break points en route to 3-3 in the third set. A break lead for Badosa at 4-3 was quickly erased by Friedsam as the rallies got lengthier later into the night.

The match was settled by a tiebreak, where Badosa's fiery forehands started to wrest control of the match for good. At 5-2, Friedsam barely missed a backhand wide at the end of a long rally, giving Badosa four match points.

Badosa only needed one chance, as she forced an error with one last fierce forehand. In total, Badosa had 16 more winners than Friedsam, and only three more unforced errors than the qualifier.

"Really happy about this win," Badosa said. "I think [Friedsam] played at an amazing level, and I’m really happy that I kept fighting until the last point."

Coming back on clay: Badosa was ranked No.11 as recently as January 9, but the former World No.2 saw her ranking slide to No.42 by the end of April, despite winning six of her first 10 matches to start the year.

Since the start of the clay-court season, though, Badosa has posted only quality results, with quarterfinal showings at Charleston and Stuttgart, and a Round of 16 appearance on home soil in Madrid. Her ranking edged back up to No.35 this week.

Including her win over Friedsam, Badosa is 8-3 on clay so far this season. Her only losses on the surface this year have been to Top 10 players, and her victories over Daria Kasatkina in Stuttgart and Coco Gauff in Madrid were her first wins over Top 10 players in 12 months.

Ons awaits: Badosa will now take on Jabeur, who rose into the elite via roughly the same timeline as Badosa. They both made their Top 10 debuts at the end of 2021, and they each peaked at World No.2 during 2022.

Badosa has a 3-1 lead in their head-to-head, with three of those four meetings coming within the last two years. In their most recent meeting, and their only prior match on clay, Badosa prevailed 7-6(9), 1-6, 6-3 on the indoor dirt of Stuttgart last year.

A potential wrinkle is whether Jabeur's body will cooperate and allow her to play the match. The Tunisian has struggled with various injuries throughout this season; most recently, a calf injury caused her to miss out on defending her Madrid title two weeks ago.