Jessica Pegula arrives in Madrid on the back of a second straight Credit One Charleston Open title and an impressive start to 2026. Currently fifth in the WTA rankings, she is the third best player of the season in the Race to Riyadh, sitting just behind Elena Rybakina and Aryna Sabalenka after wins in Charleston and the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships.

At her last nine tournaments Pegula has reached the semifinals or better at seven and the quarterfinals at the other two. The improvements she has made to her serve and a composed confidence in her all-around game have powered that run. “I think sometimes it can get kind of boring if you see the same players all the time,” she told me straight after winning a second straight Credit One Charleston Open. “The depth right now in the Top 10 is great, and I think we have a really strong Top 5.”

Pegula downplayed any idea of a dominant trio while acknowledging the strength around her. She named a half dozen rivals before referring to her own form. “And then there’s me,” she said. “I’ve been playing good tennis.”

At 32, Pegula describes her identity on tour as balanced rather than one-dimensional, and said she has worked to add aggression without losing steadiness. “I’ve had to find the balance,” she told me. “I can be very aggressive, and at the same time, I’m very good at being steady. Most players are one way or the other, but I’ve never been a truly defensive or offensive player. I think I’ve had to work on being more aggressive in my own way, which isn’t maybe the same outright power like and Aryna or Elena have. I think mine is a more balance approach of taking the ball early, using my footwork, using my hands and my timing to do that. Then obviously, I’ve used my serve to make it more of a weapon against those girls. That has really helped to set up the next couple shots so I’m not on the defense as much.

“It’s been more about emphasizing things that I already do really well and make them a little bit better.”

Her clay swing in 2026 was testing, but the final in Charleston proved straightforward: a 6-2, 6-2 win over Yuliia Starodubtseva. “It’s actually nice that I played much better today because I think I have a bit more confidence. In the other matches, I wasn’t feeling my best or playing my best tennis, so I think I’m going to build off what I can do better,” she told me. “Today at least shows I’m able to do some of the things better that I’d been doing in the previous matches this week. I’ll take that as positive momentum moving forward into my training.”

With three weeks to prepare, she expressed optimism about adapting to Madrid’s altitude and faster clay. “I’ll be at altitude and the courts will play kind of fast,” she told me. “I’ve had good results there before, so I think it’s somewhere I can do well because it’s a little faster. I’ll just have to prepare and hopefully take some confidence from these matches I just won. I’ve been able to change and adapt when I need to.”

Yuliia Starodubtseva closed a breakthrough week at the Credit One Charleston Open as the tournament finalist, falling 6-2, 6-2 to defending champ Jesica Pegula. The Old Dominion University alum leaves Charleston with confidence and a revised short-term plan as she prepares for the European clay swing.

“I was going to play a tournament next week in Madrid; there’s a 125k,” Starodubtseva recalled after a 6-2, 6-2 defeat to defending champ Jesica Pegula. “I was meant to play a 125 in Portugal the following week, and after that I had Madrid 1000.

“I feel like I deserve a little break. You want to take some breaks, and like the more you obviously lose, the more weeks you need to play. So, I find it like a reward in a way that I can take some weeks for myself. I’m also moving places. I have a lot to do, and going to take some days off tennis as well.”

The week included a dominant semifinal victory over 2025 Australian Open champion Madison Keys, and the pressure of competing on a bigger stage was a new experience.

“I call it stimulation,” she said in her post-match press conference. “Like, because you go find a tournament and you play somebody great — like I played Madison Keys in the semis. I couldn’t sleep the night before or fall asleep because all I think about is the match next day. And it is overwhelming, but when you can’t fall asleep and you just keep thinking about like what’s going to happen tomorrow, how are you going to play, what are you going to do, I haven’t found a solution yet how to fix this.

“But I feel like the more I put myself on further stages in the tournaments, I feel like I’ll learn how to cope with it as well.”

Starodubtseva plans to invest part of her Charleston prize money in a traveling physio and believes the week reaffirmed the style she wants to play.

“I feel like I changed up a bit my play style and kind of like realized what type of player I actually am, and I think I’ll try and build from there on,” she said. “I definitely played more aggressive tennis last two weeks, and I think it’s in my nature, and maybe I haven’t been letting myself do it in previous weeks, maybe tried to do more other stuff rather than just keeping it simple and be aggressive in certain moments. And I think this was like the biggest lesson in the last two weeks that I had.”

She is tentatively planning a return to the Mutua Madrid Open, where she reached the fourth round as a qualifier just over a year ago. “I feel like maybe my favorite surface is becoming like fast clay, and Madrid is that,” she told me. “Roland-Garros is that. I did good there as well.

“Here is like the clay is a bit faster. I feel like I did good here as well. So, I’m kind of excited for that tournament, and I know I have to maybe defend a lot of points there, but I feel like I have no pressure here. Just going to try and do my best there.”

“I think [clay] really suits her game,” agreed Pegula. “She’s really tricky. I think maybe she wasn’t playing her best. I think I was playing at a really high level. But then you could see at the end there that, like, she didn’t miss a ball for like two games, and I was like, ‘Oh, she’s going after it right now.’ And I think that’s probably what caused everyone a lot of issues earlier in the week in her earlier rounds here.”

Jessica Pegula successfully defended her title at the Credit One Charleston Open, a defense that made her the first woman since Serena Williams to repeat as champion at the event.

The top seed closed the week with her most commanding match, defeating Yuliia Starodubtseva 6-2, 6-2 in the final. Asked how she planned to display what appear to be matching trophies, Pegula offered an explanation that kept the moment light.

Q. Now that you have a matching set of trophies, have you thought about how you’re going to display them at home?

JESSICA PEGULA: My one from last year is actually slightly broken. I don’t think I ever told Bob [Moran], but it somehow fell off of a table into a suitcase. Thank god for the suitcase, because if it wasn’t there, it would have been shattered. It actually just broke the top, so I’m like, Oh, at least I have another one so I can put it up in place of the old one. It doesn’t look horrible, though, because it’s just the top.

It was literally one of those things that happened in slow motion; I was like, Ah, Oh my God! I was like, I don’t know how that didn’t shatter everywhere. So, yeah, story time. It’ll be next to the other one, though.

Pegula’s comments came after a week in which she controlled the baseline and converted opportunities aggressively. The repeat in Charleston adds another title to her record and leaves her with what she described as an almost matching pair of trophies, the older one bearing the mark of an unfortunate household mishap.

For now, the intact trophy from this week will sit beside last year’s slightly damaged piece, closing out a memorable run at the Credit One Charleston Open.