Charleston champ: Danielle Collins claims second straight WTA crown

She may have left sunny Miami, but Danielle Collins is still red-hot.

One week after winning the biggest title of her career at the WTA 1000 in her native Florida, the American backed it up with another dominant trophy run on the green clay of Charleston, S.C. The unseeded champion clinched her fourth tour-level crown on Sunday with a 6-2, 6-1 demolition against fourth seed Daria Kasatkina—a result that moved her up to No. 15 in the WTA rankings.

Not since Serena Williams in 2013 has a player won titles on the Miami hard courts and the Charleston clay in the same season.

Now on a 13-match winning streak, Collins beat four seeded opponents in Charleston, including second seed Ons Jabeur, the defending champion, in Round 2 and third seed Maria Sakkari in the semis. Jabeur, the 2022 US Open finalist, was the only player to take a set off Collins at the WTA 500; she was turned back 6-3, 1-6, 6-3 by the American.

Since she dropped the opening set of her Miami run, Collins has won won 26 of 27 sets. In the 26 victorious frames—none of which required a tiebreak—she lost fewer than 2.5 games on average.

"I had a lot of matches in Miami, and I had a lot of matches here," said Collins, who posed with her dog, Quincy, at the trophy ceremony. "I had, at one point in this tournament, two matches in one day, which is not easy to pull off. I don't know if I've done that before as a professional. I feel like the last time I did that was like in 12-and-unders.

"So to be able to physically battle and push myself to a new limit gives me a lot of confidence. I've been so happy to be, obviously, playing at the level that I've been playing, but to be able to back it up two weeks in a row has just been fantastic."

By doubling her career trophy haul in the space of two weeks and embarking on the longest winning streak of her career, Collins has moved within touching distance of her career-high WTA ranking of No. 7, which she achieved in July 2022 behind the strength of her run to that year's Australian Open final.

Her 13-match winning streak trumps the 12-match run that propelled her to titles in Palermo (clay) and San Jose (hard) in 2021. She also beat Kasatkina to complete that trophy double, though the events were not in back-to-back weeks.

Americans Krueger/Stephens win Charleston doubles title

Ashlyn Krueger and Sloane Stephens made it a clean sweep for the U.S. on home soil by claiming the Charleston doubles crown. The Americans defeated Ukrainian sisters Lyudmyla and Nadiia Kichenok, 1-6, 6-3, 10-7, in Sunday's final to clinch a maiden tour-level doubles title for both.