Living on the edge, Jaqueline Cristian refuses to lose

ROME -- Jaqueline Cristian is proving to be the tour’s most stubborn escape artist. By saving match points to secure victory three times already this season -- a mark that leads the WTA Tour Driven by Mercedes-Benz -- the Romanian has used the narrowest of margins as a springboard. 

First came Indian Wells, where Cristian saved three match points serving at 4-5 in the third before closing out a 0-6, 6-2, 7-5 win over Maya Joint in the second round.

Next came Rouen, and her most unlikely turnaround. Against home favorite Tiantsoa Rakotomanga Rajaonah, Jaqueline Cristian saved four match points in the second set, then recovered from 0-4 in the decider -- and a point from 0-5 -- to win 2-6, 7-6(6), 7-5. Afterward, she said the comeback was driven in part by a straight-sets loss to Rajaonah at the same event a year earlier.

It was clearly becoming a habit. In her next tournament after Rouen, Cristian trailed Yuliia Starodubtseva by a set and 3-1, but saved another three match points down 6-5 in the second set en route to a 3-6, 7-6(5), 6-4 win in 3 hours and 6 minutes, the longest match of her season. 

"What can I say? I'm usually a fighter on the court, and I've always been since I was a little kid," Cristian, 27, said ahead of the Internazionali BNL d'Italia this week, where she is scheduled to face Beatriz Haddad Maia in the first round on Tuesday. "It's just this thing of never giving up. Somehow in this moment I really find good focus, good strength, and I really trust myself more that I can stay there and turn it."

Cristian has sharpened her edge in tight matches over the past two years. The match-point escapes reflect a broader trend: She is 2-0 in third-set tiebreaks this season and 6-3 in deciding sets. She climbed from No. 73 to No. 39 in 2025 to enter the Top 50, and debuts at No. 29 this week.

She didn't celebrate that milestone -- not just because she's already in tournament mode in Rome, but because she and her team have made a conscious decision not to focus on her ranking.

"It's just about the dynamic of the work day by day," she said. "I feel like I'm a bit more mature and a bit more aware of what I'm doing, what works for me, what doesn't."

Her turnaround came in March 2024 when, seeking a breakthrough, she reached out to coach Javier Marti. The Spaniard had previously worked with Paula Badosa and Jessica Bouzas Maneiro, and Cristian liked what she'd observed of his style at tournaments. For his part, Marti saw Cristian's unrealized potential -- specifically, he told Gazeta Sporturilor in 2025, her consistency when she wasn't having a good day.

"The goal is to get a good mentality even when she doesn't feel the ball very well," Marti said. "To have a fighting spirit, to be able to win a match even when there are no good sensations."

To this end, Cristian and Marti added trainer Pedro Pascua to the team, incorporating neurocognitive work into her physical preparation. They also expanded her options on court.

"He's into every little detail, and he made me understand a lot more and a lot better about tennis," Cristian said. "Sometimes, it's just very little details that make a huge difference. ... The choices of the shots that you're making, and the directions of the shots, and your court positioning, these type of things. Plus the biggest thing, I think, is the intensity that he's been putting in the practice. He kind of forced me to level up."

That was the groundwork for Cristian's ability to wriggle out of seemingly impossible situations. When asked to break down exactly how "being a fighter" manifests technically and mentally, she specifies that, first and foremost, it's about decision-making and shot choices.

When she was match point down against Joint, Rakotomanga Rajaonah and Starodubtseva, Cristian didn't fall into the trap of altering her approach -- she neither focused on keeping the ball in court nor on upping her aggression.

"I was just trying to choose the ball well," she said. "I don't take, like, crazy risks. But if I feel like I want to do a drop shot, I'm going to do the drop shot, you know?"

(Indeed, Cristian pulled off a superb drop shot to stave off one of her match points against Starodubtseva.)

"My eyes are bigger, you know?" Cristian continued. "And I'm just trying to choose wisely, doing the correct shots, and to also be brave. Like, don't be scared of that ball to not miss. You have to go for your shots, because whenever you think that you're going to miss, or you're scared of not missing, that's when you miss.

"I don't feel like I was doing a bad match, or that I was not doing the right things. In this moment, the level is there -- like, we are both playing good. It's a little bit of -- I will not say luck, but let's say the choices that you make."

Cristian enjoys the extra confidence boost these matches have given her, but doesn't consider her work done. Escaping from match point down is all very well, but not going match point down in the first place would be even better.

"I'm trying not to arrive there, you know?" she aid. "I'm trying to start the matches better, because this is a thing that lately I've been -- not really struggling, but I've faced it a little bit more often than I wanted to. We are trying to focus on this now, to start better the matches so that I don't arrive in that position."