A young muscular American woman

As much in her tennis as physically!

What a satisfaction to see her first matches of 2026! The 2024/2025 revelation, 18-year-old Iva Jovic, has rocketed into the top 40 in two years. Last season, she grabbed a W100 on clay, a Challenger on grass, and a WTA title on hard courts in Guadalajara, with a prize pool of a million dollars. Hard to be more complete at such a young age. What she’d been missing until now was clearly power on serve, given her rather light frame. And if she wants to really start bothering the top 30, it’ll have to come through a more effective serve, so she stops getting punished on her second serves and can handle the missiles from players like Keys or Rybakina.

I was therefore very surprised by her physique yesterday against Bejlek: much more muscular, leaner, with a winner’s mindset that really showed in her body language. I pay a lot of attention to that, from watching so many matches, spotting little timing tells or physical cues, etc. A kind of personal game.

Coming back to the matchup, the Belgian Costoulas is performing surprisingly well for her very first WTA tournament, after a strong 2025 season on blue courts. A resounding win over the young Quevedo, despite a low 38% first-serve percentage, but 71% of points won behind both first and second serves for the Belgian. A very poor performance from the Spaniard, played on Center Court.

Costoulas’s fine run should end here, and Iva has a great opportunity to reach the quarterfinals and all the tennis needed to put out the fire of the Belgian momentum.