ITF W75 Prague: Francesca Jones vs Ena Shibahara final analysis
Big performance from the heavy forehand and another title for "Francesclay" Jones
Top seed Fran Jones (WTA #138) recovered from a break down in both sets to secure a 6-3, 6-4 win over second favourite Ena Shibahara (WTA #139) and conquer the ITF W75 Advantage Cars Prague Open without dropping a set.
After triumphing at W75 Vacaria back in March, this was the second ITF Tour title of the season for the 24-year old Brit.
Remarkably, all of Jones’ 9 career singles titles and 16 finals reached as a pro have come on clay. She is truly Britain’s clay court specialist!
Such distinction is the result of a move to the Sanchez Casal Tennis Academy in Barcelona at the tender age of 9. Growing up on clay allowed Jones to develop the sort of heavy forehand best known as the big weapon of Spanish Armada members.
Jones is certainly well equipped to rip her own forehand bombs and demonstrated it during the Prague final.
📺 source: ITF Tour
On the verge of cracking the Top-120 for the very first time next Monday (sits currently at #111 in live rankings), the Brit continues to break new ground as someone born with Ectrodactyly Ectodermal Dysplasia syndrome — a rare genetic condition that in Jones’ case has required double digit surgeries, means she has three fingers and a thumb on each hand, three toes on her right foot and four toes on her left and can make her vulnerable to physical issues, especially during long matches.
Something that Jones never accepted as sufficient to stop her dreams, in a successful tennis journey that is also a magnificent inspirational story.
Match analysis
The Prague final started out with Jones serving more to the backhand and Shibahara seeing her opponent hit more forehand returns. With both finalists overaggressive on return at times, by the end of the match Jones totalled 8 forehand return errors and Shibahara had the same number of missed backhand returns.
The secret to Jones’ win was then her ability to compensate those forehand return errors with a great rallying performance off that wing while Shibahara continued to leak backhand errors.
As highlighted below, Jones struck 17 winning forehand groundstrokes during rallies with 8 unforced errors (marked by green box). She was particularly efficient on crosscourt and inside-in forehands, combining between them for 13 winning shots with just 3 unforced errors (orange box).
Curiously, Shibahara finished with the same number of forehand groundstroke unforced errors as Jones, at 8. But she achieved it while accumulating 7 winning forehands, 10 fewer than her opponent (blue box).
The gap between finalists was further and decisively widened by Shibahara’s 15 backhand unforced errors during rallies (grey box).
Once return and rallying groundstroke numbers were merged, Jones accrued a +1 differential between winning shots and errors from the forehand wing. She won 20 points off forehands (9 winners plus 11 shots that induced forced errors) while accumulating 19 forehand errors.
From that side, Shibahara did 13 points worse, at -12.
While Jones produced very little from the backhand, she was relatively successful in limiting errors to 11. This allowed her to finish with a backhand performance that was 9 points better than Sibahara’s (-8 to -17) as the Japanese’s title hopes were severely hampered by 21 unforced errors and 27 total errors on backhands.
Forehand Performances (returns & groundstrokes)
Jones: 9 winners + 11 forcing / 19 errors = +1
Shibahara: 6 winners + 4 forcing / 22 errors = -12
Backhand Performances (returns & groundstrokes)
Jones: 1 winner + 2 forcing / 11 errors = -8
Shibahara: 7 winners + 3 forcing / 27 errors = -17
Shibahara was only comfortable in the forecourt, hitting 4 volley winners and winning 6 of 7 net approaches (86%).
Otherwise, their contrasting performances off the ground enabled Jones to dominate from the back.
The eventual champion finished with a 17-point advantage in baseline duels (43 to 26) and a 60% to 38% superiority in overall baseline win-rates.
Francesca Jones (WTA #138, seed 1) vs Ena Shibahara (WTA #139, seed 2)
2025 Prague final - Match Data
Set by Set Stats
Points Won by Rally Length
Rally Length
Winners and Errors (returns and rally shots)
Serve and Return
1st Serves
2nd Serves
Return & rallying performance
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