Mertens saves three match points to dethrone Paolini and end Italian’s two-year top-10 run
Jasmine Paolini stood three points from the round of 16 in Rome and walked off Campo Centrale a beaten defending champion. Elise Mertens (No 21) saved three match points trailing 5-6 on her own serve in the second set before edging the Italian (No 9) 4-6, 7-6(5), 6-3 in two hours and 41 minutes, a result that ends Paolini’s title defence, costs her 1,000 ranking points, and pushes her out of the top 10 for the first time in two years.
Jasmine Paolini, Rome 2026 | © Inside / PsNewz
Rome just didn’t want to see that. Belgian No. 21 seed Elise Mertens saved three match points and stunned defending champion Jasmine Paolini 4-6, 7-6(5), 6-3 in the third round of the Rome WTA 1000, ending the Italian’s title defence and her two-year run inside the top 10, in two hours and 41 minutes on Campo Centrale.
Paolini, the No. 9 seed and the world No. 8, had served and won the opening set 6-4, breaking Mertens in the 10th game. She moved 4-2 ahead in the second and looked on course for the round of 16. But Mertens broke back in the seventh game, and the decisive sequence arrived with the Belgian trailing 5-6 on her own serve, where she saved three consecutive match points to force a tiebreak.
Mertens then opened a 5-2 lead in the breaker and converted on her second set point at 6-5, levelling the match.
The defeat costs Paolini the 1000 ranking points
The third set followed the gravity of the second. Mertens broke for 4-2, held to the line and closed out the win. She will face the winner of No. 8 seed Mirra Andreeva and Viktorija Golubic in the round of 16.
It is Mertens’s first top-10 win in exactly 12 months — since beating Jessica Pegula in the third round of Rome last year – and improves her head-to-head record against Paolini to 5-2.
The defeat costs Paolini the 1,000 ranking points she earned in Rome a year ago, when she beat Coco Gauff in the final. She will fall five places to No. 13 in next week’s rankings, ending a streak inside the top 10 that began two years ago. The Italian’s clay season has been a struggle: she arrived in Rome with two wins in four matches on the surface and survived the first round only after recovering from a set down against French wild card Léolia Jeanjean.
