16-year-old Australian Emerson Jones faces a monumental battle against sixth-seed Elena Rybakina on Margaret Court Arena today, but is she a chance?
It appears to be an impossible task for Jones. However, she is coming off a strong Adelaide tournament.
The junior No.1 made the second-round by defeating then-world No.37 Xinyu Wang in straight sets and being more than competitive against top-10 player Daria Kasatkina.
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Rybakina comes off a strong United Cup where she went 3-1 in matches, only losing to Iga Świątek.
So, how can the young Aussie cause a monumental upset?
Here are three areas for her to focus on.
Make her move
For a power hitter, Rybakina's movement is solid, but it does have weaknesses. She likes to dictate the point from a comfortable position on court.
Jones has a powerful forehand, but if she chooses to slug it out from the baseline, Rybakina will have her on most occasions.
Moving the Kazakh around the court will take her out of her comfort zone and increase the chance of unforced errors.
When Rybakina loses, she often makes a high amount of unforced errors and her matches against Jasmine Paolini are a key example.
Her two losses against the Italian came at the WTA Finals and French Open where she racked up 39 and 56 unforced errors respectively.
Paolini’s aggressive, tenacious and diverse game style no doubt contributed to the error count and the eventual losses.
Smart service games
Jones doesn’t have the most powerful serve, yet she can be effective with smart placement.
With Rybakina’s strong serve, the young Aussie must hold serve consistently to have a chance.
By serving smartly, she can set up the point to then be aggressive with her own strong groundstrokes - particularly her forehand.
Against Kasatkina in Adelaide, she was successful at being assertive in the right moments.
She will need to do that, particularly on her serve to stay in the match.
Jones can look to Destanee Aiava’s game against Rybakina at last year's US Open for inspiration.
Although Aiava lost in straight sets, she took her to a tiebreak in a tight second set.
Aiava reduced her unforced errors and was aggressive when needed to put Rybakina on the back foot.
Crowd support and mental game
There’s no doubt that Jones will need Margaret Court Arena to come out in full voice to lift her game.
A strong start, like she had against Kasatkina in Adelaide, will get the crowd invested from the get-go.
It’s hard to have a vocal crowd against you, and Rybakina has already had many off-court issues with her former coach, Stefano Vukov.
Although generally focused and controlled on court, she has been testy and frustrated at times with off-court issues.
Having fans against her and if Jones isn’t the easy beat she would hope for, could bring frustration and potentially more of those unforced errors.
Does she have a chance?
It will be a big mountain to climb for Jones at her age, but it’s an excellent test to see where her game is against the best.
She can be competitive, but she’ll have to be very smart in her approach to outfox an experienced player like Rybakina.
It does look unlikely that she’ll take out the former Wimbledon champion, but in tennis, anything can happen.
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