Quevedo, 20, comes from a set down to win Sao Paulo for a first tour title

One. That is Kaitlin Quevedo's career tour title count, and it arrived at the SP Open in Sao Paulo. The 20-year-old Spaniard, seeded seventh, beat Nadia Podoroska 4-6, 6-4, 6-2 in the final after losing the first set, in a match that began with her down 0-3.

Quevedo, ranked 78, did not start the way a first-time finalist usually hopes to. Podoroska broke in the opening game and again at 0-2, and led 3-0 before Quevedo found a break of her own at 1-3. It was not enough to save the set, which went 6-4 to the Argentine, but it was the first sign of what the rest of the match would look like: Quevedo won 6 of her 9 break points over the three sets, Podoroska 4 of 9.

The second set turned on its first two games. Podoroska broke for 1-0, Quevedo broke straight back for 1-1, and the set stayed on serve until Podoroska served at 4-5 and was broken, and Quevedo took the set 6-4 to level the final. In the third Quevedo broke for 2-0 and 4-0, gave one break back at 5-2, and broke again in the next game to close it 6-2. Her second serve decided much of it: she won 16 of 32 points on it, Podoroska 11 of 29. Quevedo hit no aces and 8 double faults, yet took 92 of the 171 points played.

It is the first tour title of her career, and her first final. The route ran through the fourth seed Anna Blinkova in the semi-final, 6-4, 2-6, 6-4, and she dropped a set only in the semi-final and the final. Her season record now reads 9-7. For Nadia Podoroska, ranked 204 and 29 years old, it is a first tour final lost; she has three titles at challenger level but none on the main tour, and she reached this one by beating seeds Eva Lys and Paula Badosa. The head-to-head between the two starts at 1-0 to Quevedo.

Match tale, 21 September 2026, sources: Sao Paulo, api-tennis