26 Quotes for #COCO26
CHARLESTON QUOTEBOOK: ON OUTLIERS, WOO-WOO AND ‘THREE-SET JESS’
Looking back on a more than memorable 2026 Credit One Charleston Open in the words of those who made it all happen. A #COCO26 quotebook:
1 | “I didn’t even know what clay was until I was 13.” — semifinalist Iva Jovic
2 | “It’s the only thing that keeps me alive.” — Jessica Pegula on her sense of humor after surviving her third consecutive three-set comeback
3 | “Every day. Every day, I’m thinking about it, but then there’s something that’s even stronger and more powerful: That I still have faith, and I still believe in myself. I have it deep down, and I love the sport too much. I have so much passion for the sport, and I notice it every time I step on a court to compete. I get goosebumps, no matter where I play. I just love those moments.” — The oft-injured Paula Badosa on how often she thinks about putting down her racquet for good
Bianca Andreescu
4 | “I have my goals, I know what I want, and that’s helping me stay on the path that I’ve chosen. There have been moments where I thought maybe this isn’t the path for me, and maybe the universe is trying to tell me something, but I just believe in my heart that this is what I was meant to do.” — Bianca Andreescu
5 | “I’m just on a high right now. It’s definitely very different. I love being able to compete with all these people that I grew up watching on TV, being able to walk in the same area, share the locker room, share casual conversations.” — 19-year-old American Akasha Urhobo
6 | “I don’t have so much time to think about tennis, and maybe that’s a good thing for me. I’m not overthinking stuff. I’m really just more productive on the practice court. I practice less. I probably put less effort into being a professional tennis player, and somehow it’s working for the better.” — Belinda Bencic on balancing motherhood and her professional tennis career
7 | “It’s hard for people outside of tennis to understand that we cannot just put a finger in the air, like, ‘This is going to be my perfect coach to win a Grand Slam.’ It doesn’t work like that, unfortunately.” — Diana Shnaider, who worked with three different coaches last year before settling on Sascha Bajin
Diana Shnaider
8 | “I feel like I am kind of my own thing. I’m kind of a little bit of an outlier in a way, where I just play a very balanced type of game. It’s not overly athletic. I don’t really look like I’m hitting the ball that hard, even though I still hit it pretty hard. My size isn’t crazy. I think I’m just really good at redirecting power. I think I play very smart.” — Jessica Pegula
9 | “The pressure’s there — always. It’s always there. It’s gone for the 45 minutes that you actually get to soak it up, and then you go into press, and it’s like, ‘What’s next? You going to win the next one?’ It all comes back pretty quickly.” — 2025 Australian Open champion Madison Keys
10 | “What he’s done on the court, people probably thought impossible, right? It’s unbelievable what he’s done as a player. But the most impressive thing to me is just him as a person, everything he does that makes him a good tennis player. A lot of it is off the court. He’s doing a lot of things to calm his mind, to be a better, more well-rounded person. More than in those moments on the court, that’s what makes him better, because there are such fine margins in tennis.” — Iva Jovic on Novak Djokovic, with whom she shares Serbian heritage
11 | “Maybe I like to put myself in tough situations. I like to think I don’t, but the tendencies here say something else.” — Jessica Pegula
12 | “Maybe it was a little personal, you know?” — Yuliia Starodubtseva after defeating former college foe McCartney Kessler, 6-4, 6-4 (Kessler, a onetime Florida Gator, had handed Starodubtseva her only loss in her senior year at Old Dominion University)
Iva Jovic
13 | “3 sets.” — Scrawled on a courtside camera lens by Jessica Pegula after claiming her third three-set comeback
14 | “I was inspired by Jess. She just keeps staying in somehow.” — Madison Keys after her three-set 4-6, 6-3, 6-2 comeback against Belinda Bencic in the quarterfinals
15 | “It kind of adds a little pressure, because you don’t want to do bad on your own birthday. If you lose, it kind of ruins your day just because you cannot go and celebrate when you lose a match. You want to win and finish the day on a good note. It has it’s pluses and minuses.” — Diana Shnaider, who celebrated her 22nd birthday with a 6-3, 6-0 dismissal of Leylah Fernandez
16 | “I love to work on my brain, my mind, because I think it’s another muscle. It’s one of the muscles that doesn’t stop. It’s the only one. Other ones, you can recover, you can shut them down, but this one you cannot. For me, it’s very important — the most important. I do it not just because I play tennis for my professional life; I do it for my mental health and my personal life also.” — Paul Badosa
17 | “I think the movement is a bit different. This clay is a little bit grainier, and it’s quite slippery. Someone who plays back behind the baseline can get wrong-footed very easily. It’s a little bit more icy, I would say, and the slides are a little shorter because it’s not as fine as red clay. If you can get people wrong-footed, you can almost make them fall on their face.” — Iva Jovic
18 | “I don’t really trust ELC right now. We’re kind of fighting.” — Madison Keys on electronic line calling technology
Madison Keys
19 | “I love that it’s an all-women’s tournament. I love everything that this tournament is doing for women’s sports, being just women, equal prize money, so many people showing up throughout the entire week, quailes through to the finals. So many people have been watching. It’s a great look for women’s tennis, and I hope more tournaments can step up the way thatCharleston has.” — Iva Jovic
20 | “It’s the European in me.” — Ukrainian Yuliia Starodubtseva on her even-keeled, low-key response to reaching her first tour-level semifinal
21 | “Each match, we just got so much better and were able to assert ourselves and, honestly, just have a lot of fun. I think that was the most important thing: We just really enjoyed playing together.” — Caty McNally on her run to the doubles title alongside Desirae Krawczyk
22 | “I feel like I belong here, and I feel comfortable playing in front of a big crowd and feeling the noise. It inspires me and gives me motivation to play.” — Yuliia Sarodubtseva
23 | “My mom introduced me to the mental side, the spiritual side of things when I was very little, so it was very much talked about in the household. It was never anything weird or woo-woo.” — Bianca Andreescu
24 | “She’s a nightmare. If there’s one person in the draw I would really not want to play first match on clay, she would be No. 1.” — Jessica Pegula on Kazakh Yulia Putintseva, who pushed her to three sets over three hours and 10 minutes
25 | “That’s some team-building, team-bonding right there.” — Diana Schnaider, used to flying under the radar, flew through it in Charleston with her coach, Sascha Bajin, at the wheel, resulting in a speeding ticket
26 | “We all have life challenges, and that’s been one of mine. I just try to take everything as a challenge rather than a setback, kind of like reframing it.” — Bianca Andreescu on her repeated injury setbacks
Yuliia Starodubtseva
