ITF W100 Charlottesville: Iva Jovic vs Irina Bara final analysis
Jovic played a perfect match to clinch biggest title to date
Last Sunday, two of the most promising 17-year olds in women's tennis coincided in conquering their first career W100 title, the highest on the ITF World Tour.
Wakana Sonobe (WTA #448) made the best use possible of her wildcard in Tokyo while Iva Jovic (WTA #141) justified her top seed status in Charlottesville.
Read more on Sonobe’s win in Tokyo:
Jovic came to prominence during last year’s US Open when she beat veteran Magda Linette in round 1 and extended a top player like Ekaterina Alexandrova all the way to 5-7 in the decider in round 2. Boosted by such eye-catching Slam debut, the American teenager ended the season on a 15-3 run that featured a 10-match unbeaten streak and 2 ITF Tour titles.
This year, Jovic improved to 4-for-4 in career first round main-draw matches at WTA Tour level tournaments — including a win at the Australian Open — and further elevated an already impressive percentage of finals reached on ITF Tour events entered: 75% on the season and 63% for her career.
Jovic’s ITF Tour resume
2025: 3 finals* in 4 events (75%)
career: 10 finals in 16 events (63%)
Title haul: 1x W100; 1x W75; 2x W35
* The final at W50 Spring was a non-decision as the tournament was severely affected by rain and cold temperatures
In the Boar’s Head Resort Women’s Open final, Jovic needed just 61 minutes to dispose off Irina Bara (WTA #274) 6-0, 6-1 and capture her 4th professional singles title.
The youngster was all over Bara’s serve — broke in all 6 return games and, in the second set, won all 12 return points — dictated the flow of rallies with run-around forehands, found some great angles on crosscourt backhands and moved forward whenever she forced Bara off-balance.
By the end of the match, both players totalled a similar number of unforced errors (14 for Jovic, 16 for Bara) but Jovic had a huge 20-point advantage in winners (25 to 5) and she also induced 11 more forced errors (16 to 5).
That’s 41 winning shots coming out of Jovic’s racquet against only 10 from Bara’s!
A seasoned pro, the 30-year old Romanian was playing in her 29th career ITF Tour singles final. But this was only her second title decider at W100 level and turned out to be quite a contrast to her previous experience, albeit both ended in defeat.
On that occasion, at ITF W100 Bonita Springs in 2021, Bara was just 2 points away from the title when she served at 7-6, 6-5 30/30. Eventually, it all ended in a heartbreaking 7-6 [7:4], 6-7 [2:7], 1-6 loss to Katie Volynets.
The 2025 Charlottesville final started out with Jovic averaging 2 “return+1” winners per game.
📺 source: ITF Tour
Bara managed to reduce that but it was only a temporary fix. Forced to rally a bit longer, Jovic built up points superbly and showed great touch around the net.
In the second set, the teenager continued to rip “+1” winners, but this time following her own serves.
Jovic also kept working her way up the court, finishing with impeccable efficiency once there.
By the end of the match, Jovic was 14-for-16 (88%) on net approaches and she also had a 63% to 30% superiority from the back of the court.
Out of 11 forehand winners Jovic fired from the baseline, 8 were hit while she was standing on the AD side (marked by yellow circle, image below).
Data that shows the top seed not only controlled rallies with run-around forehands, she used them to win a fair number of points.
From the forehand side, Jovic also struck winners off 5 volley/overheads, 2 approaches and 1 return. A superb production that created a 24-point difference between forehand performances.
Jovic finished with 19 winners and 10 errors from the forehand side, for a +9 differential, while Bara could only counter with 3 forehand winners alongside 18 errors, for -15.
Forehand Performances
Jovic: 19 winners / 10 errors = +9
Bara: 3 winners / 18 errors = -15
Backhhand Performances
Jovic: 6 winners / 8 errors = -2
Bara: 2 winners / 13 errors = -11
On a very tough day for Bara, the best she accomplished was to make long rallies remotely competitive. She closed out the match winning 7 of 16 (44%) points lasting 9+ shots.
But the Romanian was doubled up on first-strike tennis (11 to 24).
If those are some impressive numbers, what about medium-range stats? Jovic was simply outrageous in rallies decided between the 5th and 8th shots, winning 24 of 30 (80%) points.
Iva Jovic (WTA #141, seed 1) vs Irina Bara (WTA #274)
2025 Charlottesville final - Match Data
Set by Set Stats
Strokes Breakdown
Direction of winning shots and unforced errors (only groundstrokes)
Serve and Return
1st Serves
2nd Serves
Return & rallying performance
Rally Length
Points won breakdown
This final section gives a last, broader look at the match by presenting how each player won points. Points are listed according to their frequency (highest to lowest) and are named in relation to the last touch on the ball. For simplicity, groundstrokes hit from the 5th shot onwards are grouped together.
Breakdown by side (FHs or BHs)
Breakdown by error type (UFEs or FEs)
To find out more about the stats published here, please visit the following post.
While we follow the same criteria used on all major tennis events, our stats are collected through our own video analysis and are not official WTA or ITF stats.
Thanks for reading!
— Tennis Inside Numbers