No. 1 seed Jessica Pegula survived a scare in the Credit One Charleston Open quarterfinals, but recovered from a set and a break down to dethrone defending champion Danielle Collins 1-6, 6-3, 6-0, rattling off the last nine games in a row for a 1-hour, 44-minute victory.
Pegula has won all six of her career meetings with Collins, a perfect record that now stretches over 13 years. The American compatriots first played each other in 2012, when they were both teenagers, in the opening qualifying round of the Midland ITF W100 event. Pegula won that match 6-1, 6-2, setting the tone for a rivalry in which Collins has won just two sets out of 14.
“She came out just firing, and I was not ready for that at all,” Pegula said in her on-court interview. “Luckily, somehow I was able to dig my heels into that second set and play some good tennis.
“I don’t even know if I got fired up. I just felt relieved when she missed a couple of balls – like, thank goodness, give me a chance! I tried to mix it up when I could, throw in some slices and drop shots. Her backhand is one of the best backhands on tour, so I was like, ‘Stop hitting to her backhand as much – that would probably help.’ And smart serving — she was returning unbelievable, just hitting winner, winner, winner off my serve and I had to figure out a way to get my placement a little bit better.”
Pegula advances to her fourth semifinal of 2025, and her third in a row in Charleston. Having previously lost at this stage to Belinda Bencic in 2023 and Daria Kasatkina in 2024, she will bid to make her first final against No. 9 seed Ekaterina Alexandrova who stormed into her third semifinal of 2025 with a 6-1, 6-4 upset of No. 3 seed Zheng Qinwen on Friday.
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