On January 14th, Beijing time, the last day of the first round of the 2025 Australian Open women's singles saw the top ten seeds, including Polini, Rybakina, Navarro, and Kasatkina, take to the courts.
Among them, the organizing committee only scheduled Navarro to play at Rod Laver Arena, also known as the center court, while Polini and Rybakina competed at Margaret Court Arena, and Kasatkina played at John Cain Arena.
According to the schedule, the ninth seed Kasatkina took the court first, easily sweeping Tomova with a score of 6-1, 6-3 to secure her opening victory. Later, the eighth seed Navarro faced Sterns.
Navarro is a familiar American player to domestic fans. She once said that Zheng Qinwen plays too cruelly and can't make friends in the locker room. Zheng Qinwen's attitude is that she really doesn't want to make friends in the locker room. The two met in the women's singles round of 16 at last year's Paris Olympics, where Zheng Qinwen made a comeback against Navarro with a 2-1 victory, advancing to the quarterfinals and eventually winning the championship.
After the Olympic defeat, Navarro also advanced to the US Open semifinals, but her performance has been increasingly poor since then, falling from a lead of over 500 points to a deficit of over 500 points, watching Zheng Qinwen board the last train to the year-end finals.
Now participating in the new season's Australian Open, Navarro encountered trouble in her first-round match. In the first set, Navarro was broken by Sterns in the fifth game, but immediately broke back in the sixth game. The eleventh and twelfth games were the same, ending in a 6-6 draw. In the final tiebreak, Navarro narrowly lost 5-7, conceding the first set.
In the second set, both sides continued to play fiercely. In the second game, Sterns broke first, but Navarro quickly broke back in the third game. The seventh and eighth games were also mutual breaks, as were the eleventh and twelfth games, resulting in two consecutive sets going to a tiebreak. This time, Navarro returned a 7-5, dragging the match into a decisive set.
In the final set, Navarro once faced a 3-5 deficit, with no way out, she won four consecutive games, especially the crucial break in the twelfth game, securing a 7-5 victory, and a total score of 2-1 to艰难逆转斯特恩斯, with the match lasting 3 hours and 20 minutes.
Thus, Navarro avoided becoming the first top ten seed to be eliminated in the first round of this Australian Open. She will face Wang Xiyou in the next round, who defeated Grabher and achieved victory at the Australian Open for the first time in three years.
With Navarro's narrow victory and advancement, it is naturally bad news for Zheng Qinwen, as she cannot secure her ranking in the world's top seven in advance.
After deducting the 1300 points she earned last year, Zheng Qinwen's advantage over Navarro has significantly diminished, giving the latter hope of overtaking her. Now, she can only hope that Wang Xiyou can help stop Navarro in the next round.