Unflappable to unstoppable? Pegula ready for WTA Finals challenge
Less than an hour after losing in the US Open final in September, Jessica Pegula walked into her news conference with a stoic expression on her face. She quickly sat in her seat, adjusted her ponytail and sighed before giving her initial thoughts on the match.
She had her chances against Aryna Sabalenka but ultimately fell 7-5, 7-5, and it was impossible to predict how disappointed Pegula would be when having to answer questions about it.
But there were no tears, at least not publicly, from Pegula that day. She admitted she was frustrated to have been unable to force a deciding set and “annoyed” by the loss, but her trademark unflappable nature and positivity quickly returned. She knew she would eventually see her runner-up result in New York as a victory.
“If I can’t take confidence from this, there’s got to be something wrong,” Pegula said. “I think I’ve taken confidence from winning a 250, from winning a 1000, from being able to win another 1000. Multiple ones now. Then to be able to be a Grand Slam finalist, I think that was kind of the last thing for me. I made a lot of quarterfinals, [so then it was] ‘But can I make a semi, can I be a contender to actually win a Grand Slam?’
“Looking back, I’ve lost again to a really good player. I lost to girls that pretty much won the tournament every time. I know my level was right there.”
Now, some seven weeks later, after a roller-coaster season full of career triumphs but also extended absences, No. 6-ranked Pegula will have a chance to utilize that growing self-belief and win the biggest title of her career at the WTA Finals. She was outside of the top 20 at the start of the summer, but improbably qualified for the prestigious tournament for the third straight year due to a dominant stretch on the hard court.
“She has big goals,” Pegula’s coach Mark Knowles told ESPN this week. “Outside of winning Slams, the second-biggest goal for all of these [elite] players is to make the year-end championship. It’s validation you had a great season and it’s just the top eight players in the world, it’s really hard to get there. She’s excited about it and looking forward to meeting the challenge against the best of the best.”
Just before her 30th birthday in February, Pegula knew she had to make a change.
After reaching three consecutive quarterfinals at the Australian Open, Pegula had been upset in the second round at the year’s first major. The disappointing result — and the upcoming milestone birthday — made her think about the rest of her career and what she wanted to achieve.
Forced to miss the Middle Eastern hard-court swing due to a neck injury, Pegula decided to part ways with her longtime coach David Witt during her time away from competition. The two had started working together in 2019 and Witt had been by her side for virtually all of her career breakthroughs — seeing her rise from a player ranked outside the top 100 to a top-five stalwart, six-time major quarterfinalist and perennial contender.
“David and I obviously had a lot of success and what we were able to accomplish together was pretty amazing, but I think having started with him when I was maybe 25, and then being 30 this year, I think I’m just in a much different place — a different ranking, a different place personally and career-wise,” Pegula said in March at Indian Wells. “I just felt like I needed to take some chances. I’m 30 — not that being 30 is the end — and I think I just didn’t want to look back and be like, ‘Maybe I should have tried someone else or tried something different.'”
Enter “The Marks,” as Pegula calls them.
Pegula then turned to Knowles, a former top-ranked doubles player and three-time Slam champion. Knowles had previously coached men’s players such as Mardy Fish, Milos Raonic and Jack Sock but was busy with his responsibilities as a television commentator and wasn’t looking to get back into the globetrotting grind. But he had gotten to know Pegula when she had previously played in his charity tournament and couldn’t help but be intrigued. After some discussion, Knowles agreed in March to come on board, alongside his longtime friend Mark Merklein, whom he had represented the Bahamas with in multiple Olympic Games and Davis Cup events.
Merklein lives only 15 minutes away from Pegula at her home base of Boca Raton, Florida, so he would be able to practice with her regularly while not on the road, and both coaches would take turns with her at tournaments. It sounded like a perfect arrangement for all parties, but the trio soon encountered their first obstacle when Pegula sustained a rib injury at the Billie Jean King Cup in April. She was sidelined for the duration of the European clay season. Knowles called it a “tricky time,” but as frustrating as it was for Pegula, she was also grateful for the rare time without travel.
“She loves the simple things at home, like making coffee and hanging out with her dogs,” Pegula’s sister Kelly told ESPN ahead of the US Open final last month. “We’ve both loved video games since we were younger and when she was injured, we played an embarrassing amount of Call of Duty. She never has free time during the season because she’s so locked in, but we were literally playing every day.”
When she wasn’t gaming with Kelly, Pegula was working diligently to return in time for the grass season. She was able to — contemplating bringing her PS5 with her abroad in order to keep playing COD, but ultimately deciding against it. She won her first grass title at the German Open in just the second tournament of her return.
“Until this season, she hadn’t really had to deal with injuries in a couple of years and she said she had forgotten how much she loved the game until she wasn’t able to play,” Knowles said. “And I think it showed. She came back with a renewed vigor and was immediately playing really well.”
Pegula lost in the second round at Wimbledon — and then in the same round at the Olympics in Paris weeks later — but Knowles and the team felt her level was strong, despite the results. Everyone had high hopes for the summer hard-court season.
Pegula lived up to those expectations — and then some.
Just days after returning from Paris, Pegula opened her title defense at the 1000-level Canadian Open. Holding off a slew of fierce opponents, Pegula won the event with a three-set victory over Amanda Anisimova in the final. The following week she reached the final at the Cincinnati Open, another 1000-level tournament, behind impressive victories over players like Karolina Muchova and Paula Badosa. She lost to Sabalenka 6-3, 7-5 in the final.
And, while many top players struggled in New York and blamed the grind of the summer’s grueling schedule, Pegula recorded the best major run of her career. She credited her involuntary breaks from the tour as part of the reason she remained “more fresh than probably everybody else.”
“In a weird way, it was almost a good thing looking back,” she added.
Kelly insisted Pegula’s previous 0-6 quarterfinal record was not something that actively haunted her sister. “I didn’t even realize how many quarters she had made until everyone else started talking about it,” she said. But some had speculated whether Pegula would ever get over the hump. And in order to do it at the US Open, she would have to beat then-world No. 1 and five-time major champion Iga Swiatek. Somehow she made it look easy with a 6-2, 6-4 victory.
“I’m so happy that you guys cannot ask me about making it to the semis [anymore],” Pegula joked with reporters after the match.
Knowles credited Pegula’s ability to block out the outside noise and focus on her own game for the breakthrough win.
“We really looked at that match in isolation, which is hard to do as an athlete,” Knowles said. “She was of course aware of the situation and who she was playing but we focused on just how well she was playing [going in] and what she could do to win that match. I think what she learned from that quarterfinal win was, ‘Hey, just execute the game plan and play to the best of your ability and whatever happens, happens.'”
Pegula used that lesson the following day in the semifinal against Muchova. Losing the first set 6-1 in just 30 minutes and falling into a 2-0 deficit to open the second set, Pegula refused to give up. She clawed her way back into the match and won 12 of the match’s last 16 games for the comeback victory. Less than 48 hours later she was nearly able to do the same against Sabalenka in the final. Down 3-0 in the second set, Pegula rattled off five consecutive games and a deciding set looked all but certain before Sabalenka found another gear.
Pegula has won three matches in two tournaments since the US Open final and spent two weeks at home before heading to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, for the WTA Finals. The tournament begins Saturday, with the eight players divided into two groups, and players facing everyone in their group round-robin style to determine who advances to the semifinals. Pegula is in the orange group with a trio of major champions in Swiatek, Coco Gauff and Barbora Krejcikova.
While she was a finalist in 2023, this year, even advancing to the semifinals will be a challenge. But Knowles believes Pegula’s final appearance in New York will prove invaluable at the tournament and beyond.
“I think she always had the belief that she could make a Grand Slam final, but now that’s been validated and her mindset has now shifted to, ‘I’m showing up to win this event’ before every tournament she plays,” Knowles said. “She is one of the toughest athletes I’ve ever been around. I think a lot of people don’t realize that, but you can see it when she saves match points, she just has this dogged determination that is innate.
“She just wants to keep improving, keep tinkering, keep learning. She just has a zest, an appetite for being great. We have to peel her off the practice court, we have to take the balls, take the racket away. The way people think of Kobe Bryant never wanting to get out of the gym? It’s like that. It’s a unique quality and, like Kobe and other great athletes, she’s just special.”
