Scene and heard in Rome: The clay-court swing? Try the comeback swing instead

ROME -- The clay-court swing?

The comeback swing, more like. Since the WTA Tour Driven by Mercedes-Benz moved on to the terre battue, there have been nine wins from match point down at tour level -- and they're getting increasingly wild.

Four of those nine came in Madrid, culminating in Hailey Baptiste's extraordinary escape from six match points down against World No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka.

Rome is not to be outdone.

In the first round, Anastasia Zakharova fended off quintuple match point -- yes, five in a row from 6-1 down in the deciding tiebreak -- to defeat Dayana Yastremska 4-6, 7-5, 7-6(6) in 3 hours and 3 minutes. It was the first time any player had won from quintuple match point down since Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova denied Viktoriya Tomova 6-1, 6-7(5), 7-6(7) in the Eastbourne first round last year (Pavlyuchenkova saved six in total).

In a hard-hitting rollercoaster of a contest, Zakharova first escaped a 4-2 deficit in the second set. She held her first two match points at 6-5 in the third, only for Yastremska to smack return winners on both.

Live by the sword, die by the sword. Having stayed in the match thanks to go-for-broke aggression, Yastremska proceeded to hit herself out of it in the tiebreak. She sent a volley wide on her first match point, then committed five consecutive forehand unforced errors to go down match point again. A wild swing and a miss on another return, and it was Zakharova roaring her celebration in disbelief.

Would that be the most unlikely escape of the tournament? Hold my beer, said Anna Kalinskaya. The No. 22 seed saved a whopping nine match points to triumph 4-6, 7-6(4), 7-5 over Katerina Siniakova in the second round -- at 3 hours and 29 minutes, this was the second-longest main-draw match of 2026.

Kalinskaya, who trailed 5-3 in both the second and third sets, saved her first five match points serving down 5-4 in the second and her next four returning down 5-4 in the third. Impressively, seven of those saves were off her own racquet.

Kalinskaya came up with one-two punches on match points one and three, an aggressive off forehand on match point four and a drive volley on match point five. In the second-set batch, Siniakova's only squandered opportunity was her missed return on match point two.

The Czech also netted a forehand on match point six, but the final trio of saves were the most impressive from Kalinskaya: a series of powerful backhands on match point seven, a bold drop shot winner on match point eight and a backhand banger down the line on the 14th shot of the rally on match point nine.

After all that, Kalinskaya only needed one of her own to close out the win, and it came courtesy of another netted Siniakova forehand. It was the most match points saved en route to a main-draw victory since Elise Mertens staved off 11 against Ekaterina Alexandrova in last year's 's-Hertogenbosch semifinals.

Every year, a Penkotrangeli moment

Larger-than-life walking meme and crowd favorite Jelena Ostapenko + Stadio Pietrangeli, the Foro Italico's scenic sunken court for the true fans: name a more iconic duo, I'll wait.

Ostapenko and Pietrangeli's annual rendezvous is becoming a tradition, and she now owns a 5-2 record on the court after defeating lucky loser Elena-Gabriela Ruse -- a last-minute replacement for Amanda Anisimova -- 2-6, 6-2, 6-3 in the second round on Thursday. 

It was an on-brand rollercoaster for the Latvian, who trailed by a set and a break before storming back. The third set featured an abundance of extremely chaotic moments: Ostapenko's four consecutive double faults to drop serve when leading 4-2; a wild exchange that she lost after a defensive Ruse shot kissed the net cord twice; and a titanic five-deuce final game that she concluded with a clean drop shot winner.

Ostapenko's career record on Pietrangeli is as follows:

2016 third round, l. Garbiñe Muguruza 6-1, 6-4
2018 second round, d. Johanna Konta 2-6, 6-3, 6-4
2022 first round, l. Lauren Davis 6-2, 6-3
2023 third round, d. Daria Kasatkina 6-4, 4-6, 6-0
2024 first round, d. Anastasia Potapova 6-4, 6-2
2024 third round, d. Rebecca Sramkova 4-6, 6-4, 7-6(3)
2026 second round, d. Elena-Gabriela Ruse 2-6, 6-3, 6-3

It should also be noted that Ostapenko was originally scheduled to face Laura Siegemund on Pietrangeli in the 2025 third round, only for fans to be cruelly denied after a lower limb injury forced Siegemund to withdraw ahead of the match. The schedulers have made up for that this year. She's back on the court on Saturday for her third round against Zheng Qinwen.

From pre-qualifying to the main draw, Basiletti and Urgesi fly the flag for Italy

Of all the participants in a tournament, qualifying wild cards are perhaps the least heralded. None in this year's draw were ranked in the Top 250; indeed, four of the six had to win through a pre-qualifying tournament to prove their worth.

For two of those, the hard yards of the preliminaries to the preliminaries clearly sharpened them up. Neither 20-year-old Noemi Basiletti, ranked No. 427, nor 21-year-old Federica Urgesi, ranked No. 410, had ever defeated a Top 100 player before this week. Both of them managed to take down two to make the main draw -- Basiletti came through 6-4, 6-3 against Emiliana Arango and 6-3, 6-7(8), 6-4 against Daria Snigur, while Urgesi upset Renata Zarazua 6-4, 2-6, 6-3 and Veronika Erjavec 6-4, 6-1.

Urgesi, who made her tour-level debut in Rome last year, couldn't go any further, losing 6-1, 6-1 to Viktorija Golubic. But Basiletti, playing the first main draw of her career, captured a third straight Top 100 win, defeating Ajla Tomljanovic 7-5, 6-4. It was particularly impressive given that the match was halted overnight with Basiletti leading 4-1. On Thursday, she held off the Australian's comeback attempt, converting her third match point in a six-deuce final game.

"A dream come true," Basiletti told Gazzetta after her win. An alumna of the Rafa Nadal Academy on Mallorca whose role models in tennis are Flavia Pennetta ("I've always liked the way Flavia behaved on court") and Jessica Pegula ("We have a fairly similar game, in terms of tactical foundations"), Basiletti's reward is to face a Top 10 opponent for the first time on Friday night -- No. 7 seed Elina Svitolina.