The clay-court swing began last week on the WTA Tour driven by Mercedes-Benz, opening with two of the longest-running events on the calendar. The WTA 500 tournament in Charleston has been held annually since 1973 and staged its 54th edition this year. The Bogota WTA 250, first held in 1998, marked its 28th edition.<\/p>\n
The top seeds prevailed at both events. In Charleston, Jessica Pegula completed a notable title defense, rallying from a break down in the third set in each of her first four matches. She is the ninth player this decade to drop four sets en route to a five-match title run, and the first to do so above WTA 250 level. Pegula\u2019s second Charleston title was the 22nd of her career, her fourth on home soil and second of 2026. She remains No. 5 in the latest PIF WTA Rankings.<\/p>\n
In Bogota, 2024 runner-up Marie Bouzkova captured her third career title, and first on clay. The Czech climbs two places from No. 26 to No. 24, returning to the career-high position that she last held in January 2023.<\/p>\n
Champions Reel: How Jessica Pegula won Charleston 2026<\/p>\n
Finalists Starodubtseva, Udvardy set previous career highs<\/p>\n
The runners-up in Charleston and Bogota were both first-time WTA finalists who have been rewarded with new career high rankings this week.<\/p>\n
Old Dominion University alumna Yuliia Starodubtseva, who spent a year after graduation coaching on the green clay courts at Westchester Country Club, drew on that experience for a breakthrough week in Charleston. The Ukrainian\u2019s run turned in the semifinals, where she upset 2019 champion Madison Keys for her third career Top 20 win.<\/p>\n
Starodubtseva — the first player in the Open Era to qualify for all four Grand Slams in a single calendar year (2024), and a Beijing quarterfinalist that season — rises 36 places from No. 89 to No. 53, surpassing her previous career high of No. 63 set last August.<\/p>\n
Hungary\u2019s Panna Udvardy had not advanced past the quarterfinals of a tour-level event before last week, and her previous career high was No. 76, set in August 2022. Both of the 27-year-old\u2019s WTA 125 titles came on South American clay — Buenos Aires in 2022 and 2025 — and she carried that form into Bogot\u00e1 to reach the final.<\/p>\n
Udvardy\u2019s run included wins over 2025 semifinalist Julieta Pareja, 2025 finalist Katarzyna Kawa and a 2-hour, 52-minute semifinal against home favorite Emiliana Arango. She climbs 21 places this week, from No. 92 to No. 71.<\/p>\n
Other notable rankings movements<\/p>\n
Sara Bejlek, +6 to No. 34:\u00a0Abu Dhabi champion Bejlek reaches another new career high after making the Charleston third round, where she pushed Belinda Bencic hard in two tight sets.<\/p>\n
Emiliana Arango, +20 to No. 86:\u00a0Arango was the last Colombian standing in Bogota, reaching her first semifinal since Guadalajara last September. The 25-year-old returns to the Top 100 after a five-week absence.<\/p>\n
Bianca Andreescu, +10 to No. 130:\u00a0The former US Open champion won her first tour-level match since Montreal last year to make the Charleston second round.<\/p>\n
Varvara Lepchenko, +7 to No. 148:\u00a0The 39-year-old American reached her first tour-level quarterfinal since Qu\u00e9bec City 2018 in Bogota.<\/p>\n
Jazmin Ortenzi, +42 to No. 164:\u00a0Competing in just her second tour-level main draw, Ortenzi qualified and reached the Bogota semifinals via a second-round upset of defending champion Camila Osorio — her first career Top 100 win. The 25-year-old Argentinian enters the Top 200 for the first time this week.<\/p>\n
You Xiaodi, +54 to No. 193: The Chinese 29-year-old claimed the biggest title of her career to date at last week’s Luan ITF W100. Her run began with a first-round upset of top seed Lanlana Tararudee.<\/p>\n
Jeline Vandromme, +38 to No. 222:\u00a0Reigning US Open junior champion Vandromme, 18, claimed the fifth and biggest title of her career at last week’s Nantes ITF W50. All of those have come within the past 13 months for the Belgian teenager — at the start of March 2025, she had not yet cracked the Top 1,000.<\/p>\n
Akasha Urhobo, +40 to No. 233:\u00a0The 19-year-old American qualified for Charleston and notched her first career WTA main-draw win over Solana Sierra (via retirement). Urhobo is up to a new career high.<\/p>\n
Sofya Lansere, +89 to No. 285:\u00a0Lansere is on her way back up after reaching her first ITF W100 final as a qualifier in Luan last week. The 25-year-old won her first WTA main-draw match at Hong Kong 2023, and broke into the Top 200 in December that year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The clay-court swing began last week on the WTA Tour driven by Mercedes-Benz, opening with two of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":517386,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,1602,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-517385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-text","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=517385"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517385\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/517386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=517385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=517385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=517385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}