Emerson Jones has proven why she is being touted as the next great hope of Australian women’s tennis after becoming the first local teenager since Ash Barty to reach the semi-finals of the Girls’ Wimbledon Championships.
Barty won the junior title in 2011 and 16-year-old Gold Coast hopeful Jones will now be hoping to emulate the Queensland great who took her effortlessly to the semi-finals.
Former Grand Slam winner Kim Clijsters was among the impressed spectators as Jones defeated Poland’s Monika Stankiewicz 6-2, 6-3 in less than an hour on Friday. The third seed has now comfortably won her four matches at SW19 without dropping a set and with only 15 games lost.
Not that the young woman was in the least bothered by having such a prominent figure on the sidelines. “I noticed it, but I tried to ignore it,” she said.
“I just tried to focus on my game because sometimes, actually quite often, I lose concentration and then things don’t go well. So I just tried to focus on myself.”
She achieved this admirably – and not only in the individual event.
Jones, who says grass is her favourite surface because the faster courts and shorter rallies suit her style, is also in the semifinals of the girls’ doubles after teaming with Italy’s Vittoria Paganetti to a 6-3, 6-3 win over Japan’s Reina Goto and Spain’s Ruth Rura Llaverias.
For 34 years, no Australian has managed to reach the semi-finals of both competitions in the same year since Kirrily Sharpe in 1990.
It will also be a busy Saturday for Jones, as she faces sixth-seeded American Iva Jovic in the girls’ semifinals before she and sixth-seeded Paganetti face Jovic and fellow countrywoman Tyra Caterina Grant in the doubles semifinals.
It will be another big week for Jones, who only turned 16 on Sunday. As a 15-year-old in January, she became the first Australian in 16 years to reach the junior singles final of her home Open, and at Roland Garros last month she reached the doubles semi-finals with Paganetti.