By Chris Oddo | @TheFanChild | Saturday September 7, 2024
New York—For a long time, Jessica Pegula had to wonder if she could hang with the best players in the game. Sure, she was a six-time major quarterfinalist, with three wins over World No.1-ranked players, and a peak ranking of No.3 in the world. But after falling short so many times at the majors, she didn’t have that extra sense of faith in her game.
Despite her 7-5, 7-5 loss to Aryna Sabalenka in Saturday’s US Open final, that’s changed – in a big way.
“Iif I can’t take confidence from this, there’s got to be something wrong,” Pegula told reporters hours after the final, in her post-match press conference.
“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, right, was I made a lot of quarterfinals but can I make a semi, can I be a contender to actually win a Grand Slam.”
Pegula feels that she lost to a better player on Saturday in three-time champion Sabalenka, but she had multiple looks in each set, and competed exceptionally well with the best hard court player in women’s tennis.
“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,” Pegula said. “And I think maybe I handled the moment a little bit better this year, like I said before, with just having maybe a different perspective of I had a rough start to the year and I didn’t really expect to be doing this well in the hard court swing, and I was able to kind of flip that script.”
Pegula said that she gained perspective from her rought first half or the season, where she did some soul-searching with her new coaching team, and came back stronger to win 15 of 17 matches since the start of her title run in Toronto.
“I think when I came into here, it was almost less pressure kind of in a way, because I was just happy I was in another quarterfinal,” she said. “My slam record this year was not great. So I think maybe that perspective maybe helped me through that moment, and then I was able to obviously have a great match in the semi, come from behind there, and put myself in a chance to win a Grand Slam.”
When it comes to the nuts and bolts of her game, Pegula says she is still the same player. She has just…
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