Ons Jabeur won her first title of the season with a 7-6 (8-6), 6-4 victory over Belinda Bencic in the final of the WTA Charleston Open on Sunday.
The final game was a rematch of the 2022 final which Swiss Bencic won in three sets 6-1, 5-7, 6-4.
Jabeur had seen off Russian Daria Kasatkina 7-5, 7-5 in the semi-finals and started Sunday’s final on the back foot when she lost her serve in the opening game of the first set. The Tunisian waited until the 10th game to break back and level the set before going on to win the tie break 8-6.
The second set was very fiesty, with a break in serve occurring five times in the first six games of the set.
Bencic lost her serve thrice which gave Jabeur a 4-2 lead. The World number five took control from there and won the set 6-4.
Victory in Charleston marks Jabeur’s fourth WTA title and second on clay after her triumph in Madrid last year.
The 28-year-old has struggled with injuries for much of 2023 after her early exit from the second round of the Australian Open where she lost to Czech Republic’s Marketa Vondrousova.
From 2022 finalist to 2023 champion
@Ons_Jabeur is your @CharlestonOpen champion! pic.twitter.com/OHcd7FIV9u
— wta (@WTA) April 9, 2023
The two-time Grand Slam finalist won in Charleston without dropping a set and has now won 37 clay-court matches since the beginning of the 2020 season, which is the most of any WTA Tour player in that time frame.
