No.4 seed Daria Kasatkina is one step away from the second Credit One Charleston Open title of her career after edging past No.1 seed Jessica Pegula 6-4, 4-6, 7-6(5) in a gripping semifinal at the WTA 500 event on Saturday.
Kasatkina, who won the first WTA singles title of her career at Charleston in 2017, needed a grueling 2 hours and 47 minutes to best top-seeded Pegula. Kasatkina moves into her third singles final of 2024, following runner-up showings at Adelaide and Abu Dhabi.
Kasatkina now awaits the winner of the day’s second semifinal between No.3 seed Maria Sakkari and last week’s Miami Open champion Danielle Collins, who is on an 11-match winning streak. Kasatkina has winning records against both of those players: 4-1 over Sakkari and 2-1 versus Collins.
Charleston experience pays off: Kasatkina continues her solid success on the green clay of South Carolina. She made her Charleston debut in 2017, and promptly reached her first WTA singles final that year before defeating Jelena Ostapenko for her maiden title.
Kasatkina has never lost before the quarterfinals in her five Charleston appearances, and she now holds an 18-3 career win-loss record at the event after denying Pegula her first final appearance of this season.
Pegula’s magic ends: Pegula pulled off multiple narrow escapes this week, beating Amanda Anisimova in a third-set tiebreak in the second round, and saving four match points in another third-set tiebreak win over Victoria Azarenka in the quarterfinals. However, the American could not complete another final-set tiebreak victory against Kasatkina.
Pegula was 2-0 against Kasatkina (4-0 in sets) coming into Saturday’s clash, including a clay-court win at 2021 Rome, but Kasatkina upended that head-to-head this time around. The match was so close that Pegula actually won four more total points than Kasatkina, 116-112.
Match moments: From 4-2 down, Kasatkina reeled off four straight games to win the topsy-turvy first set. The second set was similarly back-and-forth: Pegula missed out on five set points at 5-3, but she broke Kasatkina in the next game to tie up the match.
The third set also swung like a pendulum. Pegula was up a break at 2-0 before Kasatkina briefly held a break lead at 4-3. Eventually, the pair returned to parity, and Pegula found herself in a third-set tiebreak for the third time this week.
In the decisive breaker, Kasatkina’s heavy groundstrokes began to take over, and she reached double match point at 6-4. Pegula saved the first match point with an unreturned forehand, but Kasatkina clinched victory with a crosscourt forehand winner of her own.
More to come…