{"id":32783,"date":"2026-07-27T09:34:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-27T09:34:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/francesca-jones-briton-defends-challenger-title-in-palermo\/"},"modified":"2026-07-27T09:34:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-27T09:34:12","slug":"francesca-jones-briton-defends-challenger-title-in-palermo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/francesca-jones-briton-defends-challenger-title-in-palermo\/","title":{"rendered":"Francesca Jones: Briton defends Challenger title in Palermo"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

\n

Britain’s Francesca Jones made it back-to-back wins on the Challenger Tour by successfully defending her title at the Palermo Ladies Open.<\/b><\/p>\n

The top seed beat Fiona Ferro 6-0 4-6 7-6 (8-6) in two hours and 43 minutes.<\/p>\n

Jones, who had dropped one set all tournament, took the opener in just 21 minutes.<\/p>\n

The 25-year-old then fought back from 3-0 down to lead 4-3 in the second, but Ferro reeled off three straight games to level the match.<\/p>\n

A tight deciding set went all the way to a tie break, where the French seventh seed spurned match point at 6-5, allowing Jones to close out victory.<\/p>\n

It was her fourth career win on the Challenger Tour and second in eight days, following a victory at the ATV Rome Open.<\/p>\n

“We both deserved to win. It was a close match until the end, and we did everything we could,” said Jones, who beat Anouk Koevermans of the Netherlands to win the title in 2025.<\/p>\n

Bradford-born Jones will rise from 113 to 110 in the WTA rankings on Monday following this success.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


\n
Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Britain’s Francesca Jones made it back-to-back wins on the Challenger Tour by successfully defending her title at the Palermo Ladies Open. The top seed beat Fiona Ferro 6-0 4-6 7-6 (8-6) in two hours and 43 minutes. Jones, who had dropped one set all tournament, took the opener in just 21 minutes. The 25-year-old then […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":32784,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32783","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32783","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32783"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32783\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32785,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32783\/revisions\/32785"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32784"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}