Charleston Draw Takeaways

COLLINS EYES TITLE DEFENSE; PEGULA BRINGS MIAMI MOMENTUM

There’s a whole lot of red, white and blue to the PIF WTA Rankings these days.

At last check, there are no less than six Americans inside the Top 20; three in the Top 5 alone, something we haven’t seen in more than two decades. No. 4 Jessica Pegula, No. 5 Madison Keys, No. 10 Emma Navarro, No. 15 Danielle Collins and No. 17 Amanda Anisimova will be among those taking to the green clay of Daniel Island next week when main-draw action gets underway at the 2025 Credit One Charleston Open.

None will bring more momentum into the WTA 500 Tournament of the Year than Pegula, who while the draw was being unveiled on Saturday afternoon in Charleston was busy contesting the sixth WTA 1000 final of her career some 600 miles away in Miami. A semifinalist here the past two years, Pegula is a tough out when she gets on a roll. Her summer splash of 2024 included a successful WTA 1000 title defense in Toronto, followed by back-to-back runner-up finishes in Cincinnati and the US Open, the latter her first trip to a major singles final.

The top seed in Charleston, Pegula finds herself in a challenging quadrant of the draw, one that includes the likes of defending champion Collins, 2022 Charleston titlist Belinda Bencic, 2017 Roland Garros champion Jelena Ostapenko, and countrywoman Peyton Stearns. That Collins will set out to defend her title came as a surprise to many. The Floridian, who last year enjoyed the most productive three weeks of her career when she went back-to-back in Miami and Charleston, winning 13 straight matches, had originally intended to call it a career at the close of 2024. But the 31-year-old Collins had a last-minute change of heart, informing fans in a social post that “the Danimal story has not reached its conclusion”, her retirement now on hold.

Lurking elsewhere in Pegula’s half of the draw is No. 3 seed Zheng Qinwen. Zheng, the reigning Olympic gold medalist and runner-up at the year-end WTA Finals, is just beginning to find some consistency in 2025 after consecutive quarterfinals in Indian Wells and Miami. The Chinese superstar could face Greece’s Maria Sakkari in the second round, with a chance to meet the likes of Elise Mertens, Ekaterina Alexandrova and/or Diana Shnaider.

The last time Keys was in Charleston, she was exchanging wedding vows with longtime partner and coach Bjorn Fratangelo in a Kiawah River-side ceremony. She returns a Grand Slam champion, having broken through to her maiden major singles title at the Australian Open in January. Her hot start to the year also includes the Adelaide title and a run to the semifinals in Indian Wells. The Charleston titlist in 2019, the No. 2 seed Keys anchors the bottom half of the draw in a quarter that also features a fellow Australian Open champion in Sofia Kenin (2020); Daria Kasatkina, the 2017 champion and 2024 runner-up in Charleston; and Poland’s Magdalena Frech.

The 2025 edition of the Credit One Charleston Open will feel different from any other for the hometown favorite Navarro. The former UVA star cracked the Top 10 in the PIF WTA Rankings last year after punching through to her first major semifinal at the US Open. Earlier this month, she captured her second tour-level title in Mérida in dominant fashion, defeating Colombia’s Emiliana Arango in the final, 6-0, 6-0. She lands in a tricky quarter along with Anisimova, 2021 Charleston titlist Veronika Kudermetova, Kazakhstan’s Yulia Putintseva, and American Ashlyn Krueger. Anisimova recently captured the biggest title of her career, the WTA 1000 trophy in Doha. This year marks her fifth appearance in Charleston, where she made a semifinal run in 2022.