Jessica Pegula and Alexandra Eala will meet in the Mubadala DC Open women’s singles final on Sunday, August 2, with the start moved up to 12 p.m. local time from the originally scheduled 2:30 p.m. The title match will be played on Stadium Court at Rock Creek Park Tennis Center, with a WTA 500 trophy, prize money and ranking points on the line.
The timing matters because the matchup now sits at the center of the Washington DC draw on the final day, and the stakes are immediate. The champion will take home $252,000 and 500 ranking points, while the runner-up gets $155,000 and 325 points. Pegula is World No. 3 and will remain there no matter what happens, but she will rise to No. 4 in the Race to the WTA Finals either way. Eala is World No. 28 and is projected to climb to at least No. 25 in the overall rankings; with the full 500 points, she could reach No. 14 in the race.
Pegula arrives with the steadier record and the better ranking, but Eala has forced her way into the discussion with a run that has already cut through Zheng Qinwen, Leylah Fernandez, Elina Svitolina and Naomi Osaka. Eala also knocked out three seeded players on the way to her second tour-level final, and she is still chasing her first career WTA title. Pegula, by contrast, is seeking her second title in Washington DC and her 12th singles title overall. She reached the final after beating Magdalena Frech, Anna Kalinskaya and Diana Shnaider.
The head-to-head still leans 1-0 to Pegula, who beat Eala 7-6, 5-7, 6-3 in the Miami semifinals in 2025. That match also left Pegula thinking about the Filipino support around Eala, a crowd she said she could not make sense of at the time. She later said she had been confused by where all those fans were coming from, only to realize that the backing had grown even bigger as Eala’s profile rose. The Washington final brings that same contrast into a more direct setting: one player trying to confirm her place among the tour’s most consistent winners, the other trying to turn a breakout season into a title.
Pegula will be playing in her fourth final of 2026, and she could join Aryna Sabalenka and Mirra Andreeva as players with three titles this season if she wins. Eala, meanwhile, could collect her seventh win over a top 10 player with a victory over Pegula, which would be the kind of result that changes the way the rest of the WTA Tour has to look at her. After a women’s doubles final was already decided on Saturday by Erin Routliffe and Aldila Sutjiadi, Sunday’s singles final now carries the last word in Washington DC.
