\n<\/p>\n
Austin:\u00a0Scores<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Draws<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Order of play<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n The 2022 NCAA champion made good on that promise on Sunday with a 7-6(8), 7-5 win over fellow American Taylor Townsend — a gritty 2 hour and 22-minute win that earned her a second tour-level singles title.\u00a0<\/p>\n Stearns, currently ranked No. 53, came into the tournament having lost in the first round in each of the last two years — and when she lost the opening set of her first match of the week against Francesca Jones, an unlucky hat trick seemed a realistic possibility. But she rallied for that win, and won two more three-setters in the three subsequent rounds to advance to her first tour-level singles final in nearly two full years — and first on hard courts. Stearns last reached a final on tour in May of 2024, when she won the clay-court WTA 250 in Rabat, Morocco.<\/p>\n Against Townsend, she trailed again — having lost the only prior meeting between the two compatriots. The left-hander, contesting her first WTA singles final, led for almost the entirety of the first set, and had two set points on Stearns’ serve at 5-3. But the 24-year-old saved them both, and saved another in the tiebreak — before finally wrapping up the set herself on her fifth opportunity.<\/p>\n In the second set, Townsend was the one who erased deficits — twice coming from a break behind — and was two points away from forcing a third set.\u00a0But Stearns stood tall to hold serve for 5-5 after being pushed to deuce from 40-0, a game that kicked off a run of three straight to her that won the match.<\/p>\n The match marked the second straight all-American title match in Austin, as Jessica Pegula beat McCartney Kessler to win the 2025 crown.<\/p>\n But hours later, Townsend made sure she wasn’t leaving Austin without the big prize: She and Storm Hunter, the top seeds in doubles, won that title with a 6-3, 6-4 victory over No. 3 seeds Eudice Chong and Liang En-shuo.\n <\/p><\/div>\n Three years ago, American Peyton Stearns picked up her first WTA Tour Driven by Mercedes-Benz main-draw win at the ATX Open — her adopted hometown tournament after a fruitful college tennis career at the nearby University of Texas — and reached the quarterfinals. Since then, Stearns maintained it would be nice if a Longhorn could … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22410,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Hook-em-Texas-favorite-Stearns-delivers-in-Austin-wins-second-scaled.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22409"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22409\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22411,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22409\/revisions\/22411"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/22410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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