Oliynykova, Iatcenko capture first career WTA 125 titles

Two unseeded players were crowned WTA 125 champions for the first time last week. Ukraine’s Oleksandra Oliynykova dropped just 18 games en route to the Lexus Tolentino Open title on clay in Italy, while Polina Iatcenko captured the Full Protein Caldas da Rainha Ladies Open title on hard courts in Portugal.

From refugee to champion, Oliynykova continues breakthrough season

As a junior, Oliynykova represented Croatia — the country her family had fled to as political refugees when she was 11 years old. Since then, she’s attempted to finance her career in a variety of creative ways, from crowd-funding on social media to crypto tokens to, in 2021, auctioning a small area of her arm as a NFT. In 2022, she began representing the country of her birth again. Her father currently serves in the Ukrainian army.

This year, it’s all started to come together on court for Oliynykova as well. The 24-year-old has won four ITF titles as well as the Tolentino trophy this year, and made her Grand Slam qualifying debut at Wimbledon. Her overall record is 42-15, and she’s cut her ranking from No. 328 this time last year to No. 136 this week. In Tolentino, key wins included a 6-2, 6-2 defeat of No. 2 seed Darja Semenistaja in the second round, and a 6-2, 6-3 victory over former Roland Garros semifinalist Tamara Zidansek in the quarterfinals.

“We set a goal to win the tournament in this category by the end of the season, but we did it in a month already,” Oliynykova wrote on social media after the tournament. “My biggest wish is that my dad could see me play. The biggest fortune of my life is to be born the daughter of a person who has given me all the love and care and has been my unbreakable support from the very beginning of my tennis journey. Exactly why I know how much this would mean to him.”

In the final, Oliynykova defeated home favorite Nuria Brancaccio 6-2, 6-0 in just 64 minutes. It was the 25-year-old Italian’s second WTA 125 final — she was also runner-up to Julia Grabher at Bari 2022 — and her run started with a gritty comeback from 5-2 down in the decider to upset No. 3 seed Sara Bejlek 6-4, 3-6, 7-6(1) in the first round.

Georgia’s Ekaterine Gorgodze sprung the tournament’s biggest upset, routing No. 1 seed Mayar Sherif 6-0, 6-2 in the second round. The result was the 33-year-old’s first Top 100 win since 2022.

No. 1 seeds Jesika Maleckova and Miriam Skoch captured their fourth WTA 125 title of the year together following Parma, Makarska and Bastad. Their overall record this year as a team is 40-14. The Czech duo won three of their four matches in super-tiebreaks, including a 6-3, 3-6, [10-8] final victory over Brancaccio and Silvia Ambrosio.

Iatcenko halts Pliskova comeback, goes on to take title

The most prominent name in Caldas da Rainha was former World No. 1 Karolina Pliskova, ending a 12-month hiatus from the tour with an ankle injury. Having last played at the 2024 US Open, Pliskova was an unranked wild card, and she got her comeback off to a battling start by defeating Tessah Andrianjafitrimo 6-1, 4-6, 7-5.

However, No. 267-ranked Iatcenko halted Pliskova’s run 5-7, 6-4, 6-4 in 2 hours and 34 minutes in the second round — and the 21-year-old went on to take the title, defeating Gabriela Knutson 6-2, 5-7, 6-2 in the final. Iatcenko was competing in the first WTA 125 main draw of her career, and with the win improved her 2025 record to 37-12 and rocketed into the Top 200 for the first time.

“Wow … first WTA tournament in my life and I am glad I could show my tennis this way!” Iatcenko wrote on social media afterward. “Believe me, I will never forget this beautiful week.”

Iatcenko’s title run also included an unfortunate quarterfinal victory over Renata Jamrichova, the 2024 Australian Open and Wimbledon junior champion. The 18-year-old Slovakian injured her right knee in the first point of the match, and had to be taken off court in a wheelchair. Iatcenko paid tribute to Jamrichova after winning her semifinal 6-3, 6-2 over No. 5 seed Kaitlin Quevedo, saying in an on-court interview: “I was playing for myself and for her.”

Knutson, a graduate of Syracuse and Durham Universities, gritted out a trio of three-setters to reach her first WTA 125 final. The 28-year-old Czech came from 3-1 down in the third set to win her semifinal 3-6, 6-0, 6-4 over Carol Young Suh Lee — another former college tennis standout who has been surging this year. Lee, 21, graduated from Georgia Tech University last year and was unranked at the start of 2025. Since then, the Northern Mariana Islands-born American has compiled a 69-18 record and risen to No. 230 this week.

Lee’s run in Caldas da Rainha included a 6-3, 6-2 second-round defeat of No. 7 seed Tiantsoa Rakotomanga Rajaonah, the French 19-year-old who had captured her first WTA title the previous week in Sao Paulo.

No. 3 seeds Harriet Dart and Maia Lumsden dropped just 13 games in four matches en route to the doubles title. The British duo defeated No. 2 seeds Madeleine Brooks and Anastasia Tikhonova 6-0, 6-3 in the final. Lumsden has now won four WTA 125 doubles titles, including two this year, all with different partners — she also took the Saint-Malo title in May with Makoto Ninomiya. Dart claimed her second career WTA 125 title, and first since Midland 2021 alongside Asia Muhammad.