Guadalajara Open Round-up: 17-year-old Iva Jovic seals first WTA tour-level Quarter-Final on rain delayed day in Mexico

It was a bit of an intriguing day at the Guadalajara Open which in fact is still ongoing as of time of writing due to the rain hitting the tournament and cancelling matches but for Iva Jovic, she managed to avoid it and surge into a maiden WTA quarter-final.

The talented 17-year-old American is part of the next wave of talents on the tour and has long been lauded but amid exits for a lot of the top names who entered into to the Guadalajara Open, it could yet be her time to shine.

She saw off Camila Osorio on Thursday in a rampant 6-4, 6-2 win. It is a week of firsts for Jovic who will cement her spot in the top 100 at the very least with this run and is into a first Quarter-Final. She saw off Katarzyna Kawa in the first round in a 6-4, 4-6, 6-3 win before then taking down Camila Osorio now in straight sets and now has perhaps a simpler task. She faces Victoria Jimenez Kasintseva.

This on a night where both Elise Mertens and Veronika Kudermetova were defeated in Guadalajara. Jimenez Kasintseva took down Kudermetova. She is into her second but biggest Quarter-Final on the WTA Tour having reached the last eight of a tour level event in Seoul three years ago as a lucky loser. She needed one hour and 31 minutes to take down the elder Kudermetova for her first top 50 victory taking it 6-4, 6-2.

She saved all four break points she faced and took advantage of a subpar day on the serve from Kudermetova who hit just 47% of her first serves. While elsewhere, Elsa Jacquemot kept her cool to see off Elise Mertens as she continued her fantastic run after previously demolishing Maria Sakkari.

The 2020 junior Roland Garros champion was plagued by rain to start the tie as she took to the court trailing by a set but up 3-2 in the second set against the top seed, she took advantage of an erratic Mertens who racked up 62 unforced errors. Jacquemot won eight out of 10 games upon resumption to establish a healthy lead.

From 5-1 down, Mertens asked the question as she won three straight games to close the gap to 5-4 before Jacquemot finished it off to seal her best career win by ranking. The two 20-year-olds are among five unseeded Quarter-Finalists with Jovic and wildcard Nikola Bartunkova as well as Emiliana Arango all through to the last eight.

Magdalena Frech was the last winner of the night taking down Lucrezia Stefanini with the latter leading 4-2 15-40 and then saved a match point at 4-5 on a net cord. Frech led 4-1 then got it to 4-6 but she won it 8-6 in the end. Jelena Ostapenko's tie with Marina Stakusic though has already been booted to Friday due to the rain.