Francesca Jones defended her Palermo Ladies Open title on 25 July 2026, defeating France's Fiona Ferro 6-0, 4-6, 7-6 (8-6) in a final that swung from one extreme to another over two hours and 43 minutes BBC Sport.

The 25-year-old from Bradford, seeded first at the WTA 125 tournament — the tier just below the main WTA Tour — had dropped only one set all week before the final. The championship match nearly doubled that tally on its own.

Jones won the first set 6-0 in 21 minutes. It was a blitzkrieg start: every return finding the court, every Ferro serve under pressure, the Frenchwoman unable to hold once. Then the match turned.

Ferro, the seventh seed, trailed 3-0 in the second set before reeling off game after game. She won three straight games to take it 6-4, levelling the match and dragging Jones into a third.

The decider went the distance and then some. A tiebreak — the first-to-seven points format used to settle a set tied at six games apiece — decided the title. Ferro held a match point at 6-5, one point from the championship. She did not convert it. Jones won the next two points to take the tiebreak 8-6 and with it the match.

For Jones, it was her fourth career Challenger Tour title and her second in eight days, having won the ATV Rome Open the previous week BBC Sport. The back-to-back wins are set to lift her from WTA ranking 113 to 110 — still short of her career-high of 65, but moving in the right direction.

Jones had beaten Anouk Koevermans of the Netherlands to win the same Palermo title in 2025, making her the first player to defend the crown since the tournament's 37-year history reached its current edition.

What makes this stand out is the resilience. A 6-0 first set can sometimes flatter — one early break snowballs, confidence surges, an opponent folds. Here, Ferro did not fold. She fought back from a set and a break down, earned a match point, and still lost. Jones had to win this title the hard way, and she did.

Her semifinal had been routine: a 6-3, 6-4 win in one hour and 27 minutes Palermo Ladies Open. The final was anything but.

For Ferro, the defeat will sting. She played the better tennis for long stretches of the second and third sets, only to find the one point she needed slip away. But for Jones — small in stature at 5ft 6in, relentless in spirit — Palermo is becoming home turf.