{"id":568724,"date":"2026-04-06T23:11:19","date_gmt":"2026-04-06T23:11:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/568724\/"},"modified":"2026-04-06T23:11:19","modified_gmt":"2026-04-06T23:11:19","slug":"jessica-pegula-retains-charleston-open-for-second-trophy-of-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/568724\/","title":{"rendered":"Jessica Pegula retains Charleston Open for second trophy of 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Top seed Jessica Pegula retained her Charleston Open title with a comfortable victory against first-time finalist Yuliia Starodubtseva.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The American defeated her unseeded opponent 6-2 6-2 for her second title of the year, following her triumph in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/tennis\/articles\/c1jk56jxkydo\" class=\"ssrcss-18834jl-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">the Dubai Tennis Championships<\/a> in February.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The 32-year-old, who won four consecutive three-set matches to reach the final, also had to dig deep at times against Starodubtseva as she saved seven out of eight break points to seal an emphatic win. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">It was the 24th victory of her consistent season and moves Pegula ahead of world number one Aryna Sabalenka at the top of the leaderboard of WTA wins this year.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Thank you to the fans who supported me throughout the whole week,&#8221; said Pegula. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;There were many three-set matches. It&#8217;s been such a long week for me, and you guys brought me through so many matches every single day. So thank you so much &#8211; I love playing here.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Starodubtseva cruised into her maiden final but struggled against the world number five as she produced 41 unforced errors. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The Ukrainian&#8217;s run in South Carolina did however mean she climbed 36 ranks to reach a career-best 53.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Top seed Jessica Pegula retained her Charleston Open title with a comfortable victory against first-time finalist Yuliia Starodubtseva.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":568725,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":["post-568724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=568724"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568724\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/568725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=568724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=568724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=568724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}