Last night and into this morning, two Americans, Iva Jovic and Learner Tien, stormed their way into the quarterfinals at the Australian Open in Melbourne—Jovic, 18, with a shock-and-awe win over veteran Yulia Putintseva, 6-0, 6-1; and Tien, who just turned 20, with a similar romp over Grand Slam champion and former world number-one Daniil Medvedev, 6-4, 6-0, 6-3.
For Jovic in particular, the ascent up tennis’s ranks has been dizzying. A year ago at this time, she was ranked 191st (she’s currently ranked 27th, though that will rise depending on just how far she makes it in Melbourne). But since the new season started, she’s gone 11-2—the best record in all of professional tennis—and breezed through the first set against Putintseva in a mere 53 minutes, dropping only nine points. In doing so, she’s reached her first major quarterfinal; become the youngest woman to reach the quarters in Australia since Venus Williams in 1998; and remained both the youngest woman in tennis’s top 100 and the youngest player still in the tournament. All this after notching her first win against a top-10 player—world number-eight Jasmine Paolini—in the previous round. (As it happens, in the second round of last year’s US Open, where this correspondent first saw Jovic play live, Paolini had utterly dominated her.)
Jovic grew up in Torrance, California and has been playing tennis from the age of five (she now lives in LA). She had wild success in both junior singles and doubles—she’s been playing doubles recently with the Canadian phenom Victoria Mboko—and debuted as a pro on the ITF tour in 2022. But if anything’s more impressive than Jovic’s rocket-like rise since then, it’s her attitude. She’s been continually level-headed and poised both through her matches and afterward, when evaluating them. (It can’t hurt that she’s been taking advice from her childhood tennis hero—and now friend—Novak Djokovic.)
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