Iva Jovic’s Guadalajara title defence and Kaitlin Quevedo’s breakthrough in Sao Paulo closed the Latin American hard-court swing with two young champions making major moves in the PIF WTA Rankings.
Jovic, 18 and the youngest player inside the Top 50, retained the WTA 500 trophy in Guadalajara for her second career title. Spain’s Quevedo, 20, captured the WTA 250 crown in Sao Paulo in only her eighth tour-level main draw.
Quick facts
- Jovic rose from No. 16 to a career-best No. 13 after defending the Guadalajara WTA 500 title.
- Peyton Stearns climbed 24 places to No. 36 after reaching her first WTA 500 final.
- Quevedo moved 32 positions to a new high of No. 73 after winning her first WTA title in Sao Paulo.
- Nadia Podoroska surged from No. 317 to No. 200 following her first WTA final after a 14-month hip-injury layoff.
- Italy’s Lisa Pigato, Samira De Stefano and France’s Clara Burel won the three WTA 125 events in Caldas da Rainha, Ljubljana and Valencia.
In Guadalajara, Jovic’s route required her to get through a sequence of recent Mexican champions. She beat 2024 Merida winner Zeynep Sonmez, 2024 Guadalajara champion Magdalena Frech and 2026 Merida titlist Cristina Bucsa before defeating Stearns in an all-American final.
The championship match was the third all-US WTA final of 2026. Stearns had beaten Taylor Townsend for the Austin title, while Coco Gauff overcame Jessica Pegula for the Cincinnati crown.
Jovic had been No. 73 when she won in Guadalajara a year earlier. Her successful return takes her three spots higher to No. 13, while Stearns’ fourth career final — and first at WTA 500 level — lifts her from No. 60 to No. 36.
Quevedo’s Sao Paulo victory was another first-title story. The Spaniard had made her tour-level debut in Auckland in January and had not previously reached a WTA quarterfinal, though she arrived in Brazil after reaching her first WTA 125 final on clay in Targu Mures last month.
Having first entered the Top 100 in July, Quevedo now sits at No. 73 after a 32-place jump from No. 105. Her final opponent was also contesting a first WTA final, making it the second 2026 title match featuring two first-time finalists after Kristina Liutova defeated Darja Vidmanova in Memphis.
Podoroska supplied one of Sao Paulo’s most significant runs. The Argentine had lost all four of her previous WTA semifinals, including her Roland Garros breakthrough in 2020, but ended that sequence by upsetting Paula Badosa to reach the final.
She became the first Argentine finalist on the WTA Tour since Paula Ormaechea in Bogota in 2013. The runner-up finish also marked a striking return from the hip injury that kept Podoroska out from January 2025 until March this year.
Unranked when she resumed playing, the former No. 36 began in W15 qualifying in Madrid in April and won that event. She added a W35 title in San Gregorio in June, reached the second round of the US Open three weeks ago and now returns to No. 200 after rising 117 places.
The WTA 125 calendar also produced three champions across Europe. Hard courts were used in Caldas da Rainha, Portugal, while Valencia, Spain, and Ljubljana, Slovenia, were played on clay.
Pigato claimed her second WTA 125 trophy of the year in Caldas da Rainha, adding it to her Madrid title from April. The 23-year-old Italian beat Gabriela Knutson 6-4, 6-2 in the final and rose 24 places to a career-high No. 113.
Knutson was runner-up at the Portuguese event for a second straight season but continued a productive spell. The Czech, 29, is 11-3 since the beginning of August, a period including a Warsaw WTA 125 final and qualification for her first Grand Slam main draw at the US Open; she remains No. 163.
In Ljubljana, De Stefano collected the biggest title of her career. The 22-year-old Italian had already won W15, W35 and W50 trophies this season, but had never gone beyond the opening round at WTA 125 level or higher before this week.
Her run included wins against former Top 50 players Arantxa Rus and Mona Barthel, whom she beat in the final. De Stefano also saved a match point in a 4-6, 7-6(2), 6-4 quarterfinal win over Alice Tubello, earning a 64-place rise to No. 193 and her Top 200 debut.
Barthel’s run to the final was her first at WTA 125 level since Chicago in 2018. The German moved up 34 places to No. 183.
Burel completed the 125-level sweep in Valencia, recovering from a set down to defeat Spain’s Alicia Herrero Linana 4-6, 6-0, 6-2. It was the Frenchwoman’s second WTA 125 title, following Angers in 2023.
The former No. 42 had been unranked when she returned in April after more than a year out with an ACL injury. She surged 83 places from No. 301 to No. 218, while Herrero Linana’s first WTA 125 final took her 40 spots higher to a career-best No. 223.
Bucsa reached the Guadalajara semifinals and moved nine places to No. 35. The Spaniard won her first WTA title in Merida in February and has a 9-2 record in Mexico this year, compared with 5-15 outside the country during a campaign affected by a summer wrist problem.
Liudmila Samsonova rose 13 places to No. 37 after reaching the Guadalajara semifinals, where her run included a victory over No. 10 Marta Kostyuk. Samsonova is now 4-0 against Kostyuk, and the win was her first over a Top 10 opponent since Berlin 2025, when she beat Jessica Pegula.
Frech returned to the Top 50 at No. 45 after a Guadalajara quarterfinal, a 12-place improvement. The Pole won the event in 2024 and finished runner-up in Merida this season.
Badosa’s Sao Paulo semifinal, her first tour-level hard-court semifinal since the 2025 Australian Open, lifted the former No. 2 by 13 spots to No. 57. Alina Charaeva moved 12 places to No. 121 after reaching the quarterfinals, including a victory over Elina Avanesyan in the first all-Armenian match at tour level.
Sloane Stephens climbed 34 positions to No. 135 after making the Guadalajara quarterfinals, her first at WTA 500 standard or above since the same tournament in 2022. Serbia’s Teodora Kostovic, 19, rose 27 places to No. 159 after reaching her first tour-level quarterfinal in Sao Paulo.
Anna Siskova took the Le Neubourg W75 title, the largest of her career, and reached a new peak of No. 161 after gaining 35 places. In the semifinal, the Czech recovered from six match points against top seed Veronika Podrez to win 4-6, 7-5, 7-5; she is the daughter of former No. 58 Katerina Kroupova.
Seventeen-year-old Mia Pohankova reached her first WTA 125 semifinal in Caldas da Rainha after beating top seed Sinja Kraus for her fifth career victory over a Top 100 player. The 2025 Wimbledon junior champion advanced 21 positions to a career-best No. 212.
Italy’s Noemi Basiletti moved 31 places to No. 246 after reaching the Ljubljana semifinals, extending her winning streak to eight following her Koksijde W75 title in August. The 20-year-old also made the second round in Rome in May after entering as a qualifying wild card.
Yasmine Kabbaj climbed 31 places to No. 258, another career high, after her first WTA 125 semifinal in Valencia. The 22-year-old Moroccan had come within one point of becoming her country’s first WTA semifinalist in Rabat in May before losing to Jil Teichmann in a three-hour, seven-minute match.
German qualifier Joelle Steur made her first WTA 125 semifinal in Valencia and entered the Top 300 at No. 279 after a 51-place jump. The former Top 50 junior owns a 40-18 record in 2026.
Brazilian teenager Nauhany Vitoria Leme Da Silva made the second round in Sao Paulo by beating former Charleston champion Astra Sharma in three sets. The 16-year-old, who last year became the first player born in 2010 to win a WTA main-draw match, rose 119 places to a career-high No. 541.
