Rybakina defeats top junior Jones; Navarro survives at Australian Open

A trio of Top 10 players booked second-round spots at the Australian Open on Tuesday afternoon, with Elena Rybakina, Emma Navarro and Daria Kasatkina all winning their opening matches.

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No.6 seed Rybakina defeated Australian 16-year-old Emerson Jones 6-1, 6-1 on Margaret Court Arena. Rybakina, the 2023 Australian Open runner-up, needed 53 minutes to best the homeland wild card.

Up-and-coming Jones is the current Junior World No.1 and earned her first career WTA Tour win last week in Adelaide over Top 40 player Wang Xinyu. But Rybakina was a bridge too far for the youngster in her Grand Slam main-draw debut.

The 2022 Wimbledon champion Rybakina slammed 26 winners, including 11 aces, past 293rd-ranked Jones. The powerful Kazakh converted five of her seven break points, while also erasing the three break points Jones had at 5-1 in the first set.

"Very happy with the performance, with the way I served also today," Rybakina said in press. "Looking forward for the next match."

After beating Junior World No.1 Jones, Rybakina will face Junior World No.2 Iva Jovic in the second round. Jovic, the 17-year-old American wild card, advanced to her first meeting with Rybakina after a 6-2, 6-1 first-round win over Nuria Parrizas Diaz of Spain.

Earlier on Tuesday, No.8 seed Navarro and No.9 seed Kasatkina took very different paths into the Australian Open second round.

In a clash between back-to-back NCAA singles champions, 2021 college champ Navarro (University of Virginia) defeated 2022 NCAA titlist Peyton Stearns (University of Texas) 6-7(5), 7-6(5), 7-5 in a grueling 3-hour and 20-minute affair on Rod Laver Arena.

"One of the more unique matches I've played in a while," World No.8 Navarro said. "It was just relying a lot, I guess, on my grit and toughness and fight.

"I just kept telling myself there at the end, 'Make the most of the skills I have today.' I think maybe that's something that kind of clicked there for me at the end."

Navarro found herself down a set and a break after 1 hour and 17 minutes in the Aussie heat. Stearns, ranked No.46, had 20 winners to Navarro's nine in the first set, and the unseeded player leapt ahead 2-0 in the second set as well.

Later in the second set, Stearns saved two set points at 6-5 and a third in the tiebreak, aiming to notch an upset in straight sets. But Navarro earned her fourth set point with a passing winner, and Stearns double faulted to drop that set and level proceedings.

Stearns was also up a break in the third set, and she served for the match at 5-4. But Navarro steeled herself and forced her fellow American into errors, reeling off the next three games to eke out the win. Stearns has five Top 20 wins in her career but is 0-9 against the Top 10.

Navarro, last year's WTA Most Improved Player, is surely used to these lengthy matches by now. This was her 29th three-set match at tour level since the start of 2024, the most of any player over that span.

Navarro will now have to regroup for a second-round clash against Chinese left-hander Wang Xiyu. Wang defeated Navarro en route to the Junior US Open title in 2018, but Navarro won their only pro meeting here in the first round of last year's Australian Open.

Kasatkina reached the second round with a 6-1, 6-3 victory over 58th-ranked Viktoriya Tomova on John Cain Arena. Kasatkina fell behind an early break in the second set, but once she got back to level footing, the No.9 seed cruised to a 67-minute win.

Tomova dropped to 0-11 against Top 10 players in her career. Despite posting a career-high ranking of No.46 last year, the Bulgarian has yet to advance beyond the second round at a major.

Meanwhile, Kasatkina is still seeking her first trip to the Round of 16 in Melbourne. The Australian Open is the only Grand Slam event where Kasatkina has a win rate below 50 percent (8-9 win-loss record).

Kasatkina will try to reach .500 in Melbourne when she has her first career meeting with China's Wang Yafan in the second round. Wang overcame Hungary's Anna Bondar 3-6, 6-3, 6-4 in their first-round battle on Tuesday.