It has been a really fascinating week for Jessica Pegula in Charleston. One filled with lot of struggles and comebacks but in the end the American stood on the podium triumphant.
Jessica she came from a set down in each of her first three matches and won four straight three-setters to reach Sunday’s final against Yuliia Starodubtseva. Jessica saved her best for the last as she defeated the first-time finalist 6-2, 6-2 in 1 hour and 22 minutes to win the Credit Open Charleston Open, successfully defending her title. She is the tournament’s first repeat champion since Serena Williams in 2013.
Jessica carves out another three-set win, meets first-timer Yuliia in Charleston final
The victory gives Pegula her second title of 2026, following her WTA 1000 triumph in Dubai in February, and the 11th singles title of her career. She is now 11-11 in WTA singles finals and leads the WTA Tour Driven by Mercedes-Benz with 24 wins this season.
Speaking of 11, that’s also how many hours she spent on court this week, 11 hours and 22 minutes to be exact. Her run began with a 3-hour, 10-minute win over another Yulia, Yulia Putintseva, a marathon that set the tone for the grind to come.
I love playing here, says Jessica
“Thank you to the fans who’ve supported me throughout this whole week,” Pegula said during the trophy presentation. “There were many three-set matches. It’s been such a long week for me, and you guys brought me through so many matches every single day. So, thank you so much. I love playing here.”
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While the subsequent wins over Elisabetta Cocciaretto, Diana Shnaider and Iva Jovic only added to the wear and tear from that opening match, none of it showed in Sunday’s final. Pegula trailed briefly on serve at 2-1, but she rattled off five straight games to take the first set in just over half an hour.
The turning point came at 2-2, when a Starodubtseva forehand miss into the open court gave Pegula a small opening at 30-30. Another forehand error on the next point handed her a break point, and though she didn’t convert that one, a third miss off the same wing for Starodubtseva delivered Pegula the break.
Jessica’s five-game run in the first set stretched to 10 straight as she built a 5-0 lead in the second. Serving for the match, she hit a brief snag in a 12-minute game in which Starodubtseva saved three championship points and earned her first break of the afternoon. But Pegula righted the ship two games later.
A clean forehand strike to open the final game set the table for a tidy love hold, and 15 minutes after her first opportunity, she converted her fourth championship point to cap a dominant Easter Sunday performance.
“I didn’t want that zero,” Starodubtseva said with a laugh in her post-match press conference. “I really hope this was her best match this week because to be the only two-setter (for her) in this tournament is not nice. I think she played well. I hope you do, too.
“But as I said before, she’s one of the players to look up to and one of the players I’ve been told to watch and learn from, and I agree with that. I can still learn from Jessie, and I think she’s a great player. And credit to her. She played great, and I feel like maybe I didn’t play as well as I played the whole week.”
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Carrying anything close to that success rate into the rest of the clay season would serve Pegula well as she looks to improve on Round of 32 exits in Madrid and Rome last year and a fourth-round showing at Roland Garros. She’ll begin her transition to the red clay in Europe as the World No. 5, where she will remain when Monday’s WTA Rankings are released.
Starodubtseva, meanwhile, is set for a significant jump. After entering the week at No. 89, she is projected to rise to a career-high No. 53, 10 spots above her previous best of No. 63. It comes on the heels of a surprise run that saw the 26-year-old only receive automatic main-draw entry after a late withdrawal.
