NEW YORK – Jessica Pegra was surprised and a bit amused when she saw the score in the US Open Finals, where she lost to Alina Sabalenka last year.
The record book says it is a thin margin of razors – 7-5, 7-5, some points here and there. She had a chance. She served the second set, giving it a chance to almost escape the distance.
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But looking back, it wasn’t necessarily the case.
“I didn’t remember being that close,” she said Tuesday. “I said, ‘Oh, what a great match, I’m happy to be in the final,’ I left the court and told my coach that I wasn’t serving well.
Pegra, 31, is expected to get another chance at Sabalenka in the US Open semi-finals on Thursday night. It is also an opportunity to stamp 2025, as it is the year that American women won the number one in all four majors.
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After Madison Keys defeated Sabalenka to win the much-anticipated first major in Australia, Coco Gough returned from the set to beat her in Paris. So, is it Pegra’s turn to knock out Sabalenka in New York?
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“It’s obviously cool to get revenge,” she said.
Pegra vows to bring a different mentality to the court this time against Sabalenka, whom she has only won two of her nine career meetings. Last year, Pegra was finally wrapped up in an attempt to enter the major semi-finals. This year, the sentiment is different, not because they had a clearly favorable draw to get to this point, but because the outcomes this season were uneven.
It even more appreciated what she did last summer, winning the title in Canada during a hard court swing in North America, opening the Cincinnati and the US finals. It also put her at another level of stardom, plagued by external expectations for the first time in her career.
“I saw the feedback from all the fans and how much support I got, and last year I was incredible now,” she said. “I played a girl who went crazy runs and had five percent crazy runs.
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Of course, in the big picture, Pegra’s career perspective should be easy to understand, regardless of whether she wins a major or not.
In Pegra’s first few years as a professional tennis player, she was mostly known for one thing. She is the daughter of Terry and Kim Pegra, and after making a lot of money from fracking, she bought both the Buffalo Bills and the Buffalo Sabres.
Terry Pegra, owner of the Buffalo Bills, has seen her US daughter open last year. (Luke Hales/Getty Images)
(Luke Hales via Getty Images)
Of course, being a billionaire daughter has its advantages. Tennis can become an expensive sport, and Top Echelon is filled with stories of players who need financial support for coaching and travel in order for families to pursue their children’s dreams. Many people end up abandoning sports when they struggle to break into the top 100 because it’s too impossible to make a living.
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Pegra had no concerns about them. But at the same time, tennis is just as meritocratic as any sport on the planet. The only way to build a career is to win, and it is impossible to buy what you need to be one of the five best players in the world.
For Pegra, it was a long journey. She was pretty stuck on the ITF circuit (two rungs under top-level WTA events) until she was 24 years old. She finally broke into the Top 100 in 2019, allowing her to compete more regularly in large tournaments before her career was completely changed with a surprise title in Washington, DC.
By 2021, she had been sown into a Grand Slam and began to pop up in the second week. But even last year, when her US open run exposed her to an entirely new set of fans, it was difficult to separate the ideas of the players who had to work so hard to reach this level from the implications of being a billionaire daughter.
After the losses in the Wimbledon quarterfinals in 2023, the British tabloids were particularly unfriendly. The next day, the Times of London said, “A sixth quarter final, six losses: the dynamics Jessica Pegra can’t afford.”
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Pegra addressed some of these misconceptions at the US Open last year.
“People think I have a butler. The driver can reach me, have a private limousine, you can fly privately anywhere,” she said. “Yeah, I’m definitely not. I mean, people can think of what they want. I think that’s kind of funny. Butler? I’ve read these comments, I’m not at all, no, I shouldn’t, I want you to do it.
It’s difficult to root in Pegra as she can mentally separate the player from the level of privilege she came to, as she can probably get out of talent as any player in the top 10.
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Pegra admitted on Tuesday that he had a lot of tinkering this summer after losing to 116th place Elisabetta Cocchialetto in the first round of Wimbledon. Considering that Pegra won a warm-up tournament in German grass the previous week, it was a result of coming out of nowhere. In the final of that event, she defeated Igawi Wee Tek, who continued to win the Wimbledon title a few weeks later.
That series of events left Pegura even experimenting with new strings, looking for answers, as she prepares for her hard court season and her most important tournament of the year.
Still, Pegra couldn’t get back to her rhythm until a set of practices before the US opened was intended to simplify things and play frank, flat-hit power tennis like what had reached the brink of a Grand Slam title a year ago.
“I always get it and feel like I can always come back to the fact that it hits me at the toughest moments of the year,” she said. “I don’t mean it’s easy, but I think I can take advantage of a lot of the experience I’ve had, especially as I’m getting older. I’ve come back enjoying the competition this week.”
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Rather than focusing on the outcome, Pegra plans to challenge and thank Sabalenka on Thursday night. Perhaps this time she will leave Arthur Ash Stadium with a score worth remembering.
