For eight games of the final neither woman had a break point. Then, at 4-4, Iva Jovic got to 30-40 on Peyton Stearns’ serve and took the only chance of the set. She served it out, broke in the first game of the second set and again at 4-2, and beat her fellow American 6-4, 6-2 on Saturday night to defend her Guadalajara Open title.
By the time the sombrero went on her head for the trophy ceremony it was raining, and she kept her speech short. “Okay, I am going to make this fast,” she told the crowd. “Stay dry.” Jovic, 18, did not face a break point in the final and converted three of her five. She closed it on her own serve at 5-2, and needed three match points to do it, finishing with a backhand winner down the line.
It is the second title of her career, and both have come here. A year ago, unseeded and 17, she won her first in Guadalajara, and the WTA noted that she was the youngest champion of the 2025 season. This time she arrived as the No. 2 seed and the defending champion, and did not drop a set in four matches, beating Zeynep Sonmez, Magdalena Frech, Cristina Bucsa and Stearns.
“There have been a lot of different things to deal with, to adjust to, and I’ve just been having a positive mindset through it all,” she said after her 6-4, 6-1 semifinal win over Bucsa. “There were so many ups and downs, but I was able to just hold firm on my serve.”
Stearns’ week The draw opened up when Liudmila Samsonova, the No. 8 seed, beat top seed Marta Kostyuk in the quarterfinals. Stearns, unseeded, then came from a double break down in the first set to beat Samsonova 7-6(7), 6-2 in the semifinals. “I think I started a little tense on my heels and she came out swinging,” Stearns said. It was the first meeting between the two, and Stearns, 24, was chasing a third career title after Rabat in 2024 and the ATX Open in Austin in February. It was the second all-American final on the WTA Tour this year.
The season Jovic came into the week ranked 16th, with a career high of No. 14 from late August. Guadalajara follows a season in which she reached the Australian Open quarterfinals, where Aryna Sabalenka beat her, and the fourth round at Wimbledon and the US Open, where Coco Gauff beat her 6-1, 6-4.
The 500 points put her in the conversation for the WTA Finals at Indian Wells in November, eight places decided by the season-long race. One report has her 11th in the race after Guadalajara. The last big points of the year come on the Asian swing, starting with the 96-player WTA 1000 at the China Open in Beijing from the end of this month. How qualification works is explained in our guide to the WTA Race to the Finals.
