Iva Jovic beat Alexandra Eala 6-2, 6-2 at the HSBC Championships on Wednesday, taking only 76 minutes to reach her first tour-level quarterfinal on grass. The 18-year-old also advanced to her fifth quarterfinal of 2026.
For readers tracking Jovic Tennis right now, the result answered the immediate question at Queen’s: Jovic kept rolling, and Eala’s run stopped after a six-match winning streak that included last week’s Birmingham WTA 125 title. Jovic now moves into a quarterfinal against No. 2 seed Amanda Anisimova, their first meeting, with a spot in the last four on grass at stake.
The scoreline was backed up by the numbers. Jovic finished with 26 winners and only nine unforced errors, while Eala produced 12 winners and 19 unforced errors. It was the kind of clean, fast performance that left little room for doubt, even against an opponent who had arrived in strong form and had won their previous match-up at Roland Garros 6-4, 6-2 three weeks earlier.
What made this one sharper was the familiarity between them. Jovic and Eala have been friends since the 2022 US Open, when Eala won the girls’ singles title and teamed with Mirra Andreeva to beat Jovic and Shannon Lam 6-2, 6-2 in the girls’ doubles. After Jovic’s latest win, she posted that there were days she wished there could be two winners, adding that she hoped both players would keep climbing so they could meet later in tournaments, maybe in the semifinals or finals. She also said there was no bad blood and that they were back to being friends off court.
The draw around them has already shifted once, with Belinda Bencic pulling out because of a right ankle injury and Kamilla Rakhimova taking her place. Jovic, though, has done the one thing that matters most in the bracket: keep winning. She has now beaten Eala twice in three weeks, and the next test against Anisimova will show whether this grass-court breakthrough is a one-off or the start of something bigger.
