Defending Champ Pegula Survives Three-Hour, Three-Set Thriller

U.S. TEEN JOVIC LOOKS SHARP IN CHARLESTON DEBUT

Defending champion Jessica Pegula looked to be on her way out on Wednesday at the Credit One Charleston Open. But down a break in the third set of her opener against Kazakh Yulia Putintseva, the top-seeded American found a way to battle back and advance with a nail-biting 4-6, 6-4, 7-5 triumph in three hours and 10 minutes.

It marked Pegula’s 20th match win of the season, tying her with Elina Svitolina for third most on the WTA Tour behind only world Nos. 1-2 Aryna Sabalenka (23) and Elena Rybakina (21), respectively.

Pegula remains unbeaten against Putintseva in four career head-to-heads, but on Wednesday she underlined just how difficult an opponent the fiery 31-year-old baseliner can be, especially on a clay court.

“She’s a nightmare,” attested Pegula. “If there’s one person in the draw I would really not want to play first match on clay, she would be No. 1. She’s really tricky. I hadn’t played her on clay before, so I knew it was going to be harder. I knew I was going to have to do some stuff that was different than maybe on a faster hard court. She was making me earn it.”

Pegula moves on to face Italy’s Elisabetta Cocciaretto, a 6-0, 7-5 winner over Yue Yuan on Court 3.

Iva Jovic

Competing in just her third career tour-level event on clay, her first on Daniel Island, 18-year-old Iva Jovic rolled to a 6-3, 6-2 victory over countrywoman Alycia Parks.

Ranked No. 150 in the PIF WTA Rankings this time last year, the Californian is up to a career-high No. 16, boosted by her second-week run at the Australian Open, where she became the tournament’s youngest American quarterfinalist since Venus Williams in 1998.

“It’s crazy to be in the position that I’m in, because I don’t feel that I’m close to maximizing myself yet,” said Jovic. “But I realistically didn’t even think that I would get here, honestly. When I was younger, I just wanted to play. I just dreamt about playing tennis and being good enough to be in the Slams. This is all already above what I expected for myself. But now that I’m here and I see how much moreroom I have for improvement, I see that there’s a lot of opportunities ahead.”

How does a kid raised in the hard-court hub of Southern California get comfortable on a surface like green clay?

“I didn’t even know what clay was until I was 13,” she said. “I went to Europe for some of those ITFs and played on it for the first time. I did not know how to slide, did not know how to play, did not know how to move on it. But I’ve spent a lot of time in Florida in the past couple years. They have much more clay there. And I’ve just been doing movement drills every single day. I haven’t really played a ton on clay in my life, but when it’s clay season, I’m working on my movement every single day. It’s improved rapidly because of the volume of movement that I’ve been doing, so there’s no secret there. You’ve just got to do the drills.”

Wildcard Paul Badosa continued her resurgence on a packed Althea Gibson Club Court, where the Spaniard outslugged Maria Sakkari of Greece, 6-3, 6-4. By reaching the Round of 16, the oft-injured Spaniard matched her best result of 2026, a fourth-round showing in Brisbane in January.

“It gives me belief again that I can come back, that I have the level, that I can compete against these players, that they can play these amazing points, amazing games, and I can fight through that again,” said Badosa. “I missed that from myself, because I wasn’t finding that this year. It’s so wonderful to find it again. Mentally, I think I’m overcoming a lot of obstacles in a way. I’m really proud with this match.”

Fellow wildcard Bianca Andreescu wasn’t as fortunate. Appearing in Charleston for the first time, the 2019 US Open champion was on the losing end of a 6-4, 6-4 decision against 2025 tournament runner-up Sofia Kenin. For Kenin, 27, the outcome snapped an eight-match skid, her only other match win on the year coming in Brisbane in January.

Croatian qualifier Donna Vekic, down to No. 115 after reaching a career-high No. 17 last year, saw her win streak come to an end against 2019 Charleston champion Madison Keys in the form of a 6-2, 6-3 defeat.

“Donna is a great tennis player, and you always know that she has an incredibly high level. It doesn’t really matter what she’s currently ranked,” said Keys. “I went into today being really aware of that and just kind of knowing that I needed to try to get off to a really good start and just try to keep the momentum on my side, just because she’s great. I think she’s also very good on clay courts, as she’s shown, so I was really just trying to get off to the best start as I could today.”

Other Wednesday winners include: Canada’s Leylah Fernandez (def. qualifier Polina Kudermetova, 6-2, 6-1), American Peyton Stearns (def. Ashlyn Krueger, 7-6(10), 7-5), American McCartney Kessler (def. Janice Tjen, 6-2, 6-1), and Hungary’s Anna Bondar (def. Magdalena Frech, 7-5, 6-3).

Paula Badosa