Jasmine Paolini reached the WTA 500 2025 AUX Ningbo Open quarter-finals on Thursday, taking another step towards the WTA Finals, and is joining seeds Elena Rybakina and Ekaterina Alexandrova, who also won on Day 4, but McCartney Kessler took out another seed, Liudmila Samsonova.
It was a long day. The conditions, with it being so humid, are unusual for us. But I’m very happy I managed to win, and thank you all so much for staying and supporting me. Elena Rybakina
Paolini is now just a couple of wins away from sealing her spot in Riyadh after the Italian No 2 seed defeated Veronika Kudermetova from Russia, 6-2 7-5, in the 2nd-round, but she will need to reach the final at the weekend in order to qualify outright.
If 3rd-seeded Rybakina, though, loses before the semi-finals, Paolini would only need to make the Last 4 in Ningbo to guarantee her place in Riyadh.
Friday’s quarter-final sees the Italian take on No 6 seed Belinda Bencic from Switzerland, who leads their head-to-head, 2-1.
“I’m trying to focus on the court, on the next one,” Paolini said in her on-court interview. “It’s something on my mind, of course, but I try to stay focused on tennis, and what I have to do.”
Against Kudermetova, this meant consistent, controlled aggression to weather the ups and downs of her opponent’s form.
Paolini landed 75% of her first serves, and tallied 14 winners to her 17 unforced errors, while Kudermetova’s first-serve percentage was down at 55%, and her 22 winners were outweighed by 38 miscues.
Kudermetova broke first in each set, in the opening game of the match, and then in a brilliant 5th game of the second set, in which she slammed 4 clean winners past Paolini, but, both times, she immediately conceded her break lead with a rash of quick, cheap errors.
Towards the end of the second set, Kudermetova came up with some clutch play to keep it close, until the final game, which saw her cough up a 3rd double-fault while facing a 1st match point.
“I managed to stay there, every point, stay focused and try to find solutions,” said Paolini, who improved to 4-2 overall against Kudermetova, and is 2-0 in 2025, following her 3-set win in the Cincinnati semi-finals.
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3rd-seeded Rybakina, too, is fighting to stay in contention for a WTA Finals berth, with every win now counting, and, on Thursday, she was forced to battle, suffering through a gruelling 2-hour and 48-minute contest to defeat Ukraine’s Dayana Yastremska, 4-6 6-7(6) 6-3.
Yastremska was able to match Rybakina’s first serve, especially in the second and third sets, and it was an impressive performance, albeit aided by a below-average delivery performance by Rybakina’s standards, who landed just 52% of her first serves.
The Kazakh, though, made up for it with a commanding edge on her second serve, winning 56% of her points off it, compared to 38% for Yastremska, while, in the third set, the Kazakh won 12 of 13 second-serve points, which was an impressive 92%.
With both facing just a single break point in the final set, Rybakina’s reliable second serve proved decisive.
Trailing 2-4 in the opener after just being broken, Rybakina broke back immediately, and won the final 4 games to bag the first set with an ace on her 3rd set point, after Yastremska had saved the first two.
She then failed to convert 2 match points in the second, allowing Yastremska to force a decider.
Early in the third set, Rybakina faced a break point in her opening service game, but erased it with a second-serve ace, and then broke for a 4-2 lead shortly after, later clinching the match with one final ace on her 3rd chance to send her into the quarter-finals.
Despite the physical toll and humid conditions, Rybakina was able to muster just enough strength to close out the match with her 10th ace.
“It was a long day,” Rybakina said after the match. “The conditions, with it being so humid, are unusual for us. But I’m very happy I managed to win, and thank you all so much for staying and supporting me.”
Ekaterina Alexandrova, the 4th seed, also made it into Last 8 with a 2-set win against wild-card Yuan Yue on Thursday in Ningbo.
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The win sends Rybakina into the Ningbo quarter-finals for the first time, where she will face an in-form Ajla Tomljanovic from Australia for a spot in the semi-finals.
She leads the head-to-head, 2-0, with their last meeting coming at Wimbledon in the 2022 quarter-finals when she rallied from a set down on her way to a first Grand Slam title.
Ekaterina Alexandrova, the 4th seed from Russia, also made it into Last 8 with a 6-3 6-3 win against Chinese wild-card, Yuan Yue.
She will meet unseeded American McCartney Kessler, who pulled off the only upset of the day with a 7-6(5) 6-1 win over 8th-seeded Russian, Liudmila Samsonova.
Kessler raced to a 5-1 lead in the opening set before dropping 5 straight games, and pulled it together in the tiebreak to finish off Samsonova in an hour and 42 minutes.
