{"id":27552,"date":"2025-11-22T21:06:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-22T10:06:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/?p=27552"},"modified":"2025-11-22T21:06:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-22T10:06:08","slug":"two-rising-stars-one-trophy-gibson-and-jones-to-face-off-in-nsw-open-final","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/news\/2025\/11\/22\/two-rising-stars-one-trophy-gibson-and-jones-to-face-off-in-nsw-open-final","title":{"rendered":"Two Rising Stars, One Trophy: Gibson and Jones to Face Off in NSW Open Final"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Same city, same court, new year.<\/div>\n
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History has a funny way of repeating itself, and for the second tournament in a row, Talia Gibson and Emerson Jones will face off at the business end of the Perpetual NSW Open.<\/div>\n
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On a day of wildly contrasting semi-finals, Gibson had to survive a brutal match to knock out No.1 seed Kim Birrell in a contest which took almost two hours longer than Jones\u2019 final four romp against Storm Hunter on Ken Rosewall Arena on Saturday.<\/div>\n
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But after clashing in a tight semi-final last year, two of Australia\u2019s brightest prospects will meet again in the decider on Sunday.<\/div>\n
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\u201cIt\u2019s been a while since my last final,\u201d Gibson said as she eyes a third ITF title this year.<\/div>\n
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\u201cI\u2019m very happy with this week and especially after the last few tournaments, I\u2019ve felt I\u2019ve played at a pretty good level and some of my best tennis. I really wanted to finish this year off well.<\/div>\n
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\u201cIt\u2019s going to be a rematch, this time in the final. (Jones) is a great player and definitely one of the up and coming younger girls. It will be another tough match. I\u2019ll just do my best and enjoy being in the final.\u201d<\/div>\n
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Gibson opened up a decisive break early in the third set before eventually battling past Birrell 6-4, 3-6, 6-3 under the roof at Sydney Olympic Park, with the match stretching to two hours and 46 minutes.<\/div>\n
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Gibson\u2019s powers of recovery will be tested before Sunday morning\u2019s final given Jones swept past Hunter 6-3, 6-1 in just 53 minutes.<\/div>\n
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It was a big difference to her lengthy quarter-final win on Friday over Elena Micic, which suffered a weather delay of more than three hours as the only women\u2019s final eight match not played on Ken Rosewall Arena during Sydney\u2019s inclement weather.<\/div>\n
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Jones, this year’s fifth seed who was only 16 when she won last year\u2019s title, will be favoured to defend her title, but Gibson is a much more complete player than the one who was in Sydney in 2024.<\/div>\n
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She won her first main draw match at a grand slam in the Australian Open this year and was pitted against Naomi Osaka in the first round at Wimbledon after saving a match point in the final round of qualifying.<\/div>\n
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Gibson, 21, is on the cusp of breaking the world\u2019s top 100 for the first time.<\/div>\n
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\u201cIt\u2019s been a while since my last final,\u201d Gibson said. \u201cThere\u2019s been a lot of learning opportunities for me this year and being able to play big matches, when you play a match like that today, it allows you to put things in perspective.<\/div>\n
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\u201cEvery match is just another match, whether you\u2019re playing in a grand slam final or first match of an ITF 75. You have to treat it all the same way and that\u2019s something I\u2019ve been able to learn this year.\u201d<\/div>\n
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\n
In the women\u2019s doubles final, Japanese second seeds Hiromi Abe and Ikumi Yamazaki made the wait for the inclement weather to hold off worth it by claiming the women\u2019s doubles title.<\/div>\n
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Abe and Yamazaki overcame top seeds Elena Micic and Petra Hule 6-4, 6-4 in 75 minutes.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Same city, same court, new year.<\/p>\n

History has a funny way of repeating itself, and for the second tournament in a row, Talia Gibson and Emerson Jones will face off at the business end of the Perpetual NSW Open.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6323,"featured_media":27553,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6323"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27552\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}