Jelena Ostapenko scored her first Top 10 win since 2023 with a 6-2, 6-2 defeat of No. 4 seed Jasmine Paolini in the Qatar TotalEnergies Open third round.
The former Roland Garros champion trailed 2-0 in the second set, but responded by reeling off the last six games of the match to seal victory in just 63 minutes.
Doha: Draws | Scores | Order of Play
Having already posted consecutive wins this week for the first time since reaching last year's Wimbledon quarterfinals, the Latvian has now notched her 12th career Top 5 win. The last time she defeated a Top 10 opponent was in the 2023 Beijing third round, where she bested Jessica Pegula 6-4, 6-2. She will next face either Ons Jabeur or wild card Sofia Kenin.
Only two Top 5 seeds now remain in the Doha draw: No. 2 Iga Swiatek and No. 5 Elena Rybakina, last year's finalists, who are on course for a quarterfinal collision. Here are the key takeaways from Ostapenko's upset.
Back to where it all started: Ostapenko has a strong history in Doha. Back in 2016, as an 18-year-old ranked No. 88, she reached her first Hologic WTA Tour final here; in 2022, she returned to the semifinals. Four of her 22 career Top 10 wins have come on these courts, including a memorable 6-2, 6-2 rout of Garbiñe Muguruza in 2022 in which Ostapenko fired 39 winners in 16 games.
"I feel very special playing in Doha, because I feel this is the place where everything started for me," Ostapenko said in her on-court interview.
Dominant on serve and return: Ostapenko's tally of 22 winners (equalling her 22 unforced errors) didn't quite match the 39 of the Muguruza match, but were enough to overpower Paolini, who mustered only nine. As well as the cascade of clean return winners fans are used to seeing fly from the Ostapenko racquet, her fine serving stood out: she landed nine aces, and dropped just seven points behind her first delivery.
Resurgence after rankings fall: This time last year, Ostapenko had just returned to the Top 10 after a five-year gap. But she is in Doha as the unseeded World No. 37, having fallen out of the Top 30 for the first time since 2021 this week. After reaching her sixth Grand Slam quarterfinal at Wimbledon last year, she did not post back-to-back wins again for seven months. However, that period also included a two-month injury layoff: Ostapenko ended her 2024 singles season in September and missed the entire Asian swing due to an abdominal injury.
