Jasmine Paolini’s title defense at the Italian Open ended in painful fashion Saturday as Elise Mertens saved three match points and battled back for a 4-6, 7-6(5), 6-3 third-round victory.
For Paolini, the defeat was more than an early exit in front of a home crowd. The Italian will fall five places to No. 13 in the WTA rankings, ending a 101-week stay inside the top 10, the longest ever run by an Italian woman.
Paolini, the No. 9 seed and defending champion in Rome, appeared to be on course for a hard-fought win after taking the opening set and moving within one point of victory at 6-5 in the second. But Mertens held firm under pressure, forced a tiebreak and then carried the momentum into the deciding set.
The Belgian, seeded No. 21, has long been a difficult matchup for Paolini. With Saturday’s win, Mertens improved her professional head-to-head record against the Italian to 5-2 and claimed the 13th top-10 win of her career. The WTA also noted it was her first top-10 victory since beating Jessica Pegula at the same stage in Rome last year.
The result leaves Italy without its biggest women’s hope before the second week of the tournament, a blow to a Foro Italico crowd that had come expecting another deep run from last year’s champion.
Paolini’s rise over the past two seasons had been one of the major stories in Italian tennis. She reached major finals at Roland Garros and Wimbledon, became a regular presence in the top 10 and gave Italian fans a reliable contender on the biggest stages.
But her 2026 season has been uneven. Saturday’s defeat continued a difficult stretch in which Paolini has struggled to close out the kind of tight matches she was winning during her best run. Afterward, she acknowledged that Mertens made her play one extra ball again and again and that she was not brave enough on the biggest points.
The match also fit a broader pattern on the women’s clay swing, with several players already escaping match points in Rome and Madrid. Mertens has made a habit of surviving those situations, and this was another example of her ability to stay calm when a match appears to be slipping away.
For Mertens, the win sends her into the fourth round with a major boost and removes one of the tournament’s most dangerous home players from the draw. For Paolini, the defeat will sting for both the missed opportunity and the ranking consequences.
Still, the Italian leaves Rome with a larger achievement intact. Her 101 consecutive weeks inside the WTA top 10 set a national benchmark and confirmed her place among the most successful Italian women of the modern era.
The immediate question is whether she can reset before Roland Garros, where clay courts have brought out some of her best tennis. Saturday’s loss showed how narrow the margins have become.
Three match points separated Paolini from another emotional Rome victory. Instead, Mertens turned the match, ended the title defense and closed one of the most impressive ranking runs in Italian tennis history.
