In Rome, Jessica Pegula has plenty to say about Madrid

INTERVIEW: Jessica Pegula after her second-round win in Madrid

The traveling circus that is professional tennis has packed up from Madrid and set up in Rome, but the prior tour stop remains in the spotlight for an unfortunate reason.

On Sunday, after Victoria Azarenka and Beatriz Haddad Maia defeated Jessica Pegula and Coco Gauff for the doubles title, the players congregated for the traditional post-final ceremony. But after the hardware was dispensed, none of the players were afforded the time for an age-old tradition: the opportunity to say a few words.

“It was kind of awkward. Nobody really knew what to do,” Pegula said Tuesday in Rome, when asked about the controversy. “We got our trophies. Vika and Bea got theirs. The guy was like, Now you go up on the podium and take one together.

“Then Vika turned to us and said, ‘There’s no speeches.’

“We were like, ‘What?’

“She was like, ‘We’re not allowed to talk.’”

No microphone was set up, and all of the players appeared to be caught off guard.

“That’s kind of why we were all on the podium talking,” said Pegula. “We were all kind of like, ‘What, this is so weird.’

“The guy was like, ‘Turn around, take pictures, take pictures.’

“We were like, What? ‘What is going on?’

“We kind of took a quick picture and stormed off the court, to be honest.”

Pegula said she “had a feeling something was going to happen,” perhaps acknowledging some of the other controversies during Madrid that generated discussion on social media, including the vastly different birthday cakes world No. 2s Aryna Sabalenka and Carlos Alcaraz received on May 5 (both would go on to win singles titles), along with a subsequent tweet from tournament director Feliciano Lopez.

The tournament’s use of female models as ballpersons—by now a tradition of its own—was another talking point, along with excessively late start times for both tours. But the ceremony contretemps felt like a tipping point.

“I think maybe players want to criticize in their speech,” said Gauff, who was also asked about the topic on Tuesday. “I don’t know what was going to be said in the speech. At least my speech, I wasn’t going to say anything.

“I think for the most part, yeah, I don’t think it was a great decision. I expressed that afterwards. They apologized.”

“But, yeah, for me, I feel like criticism,” Gauff continued, “I’m always the type of person saying you need to speak out on things. I don’t think the tournament should have made that decision considering the men also got a speech.

“I do believe they were not thinking of it as men and women. I think it’s just reflected like that. I think you have to take that kind of view into consideration.”

“I think it was a buildup,” said Pegula. “There seemed to be a lot of drama in Madrid this year on a variety of different things…It just kind of got worse and worse and worse regarding a lot of issues that you guys see online, funny tweets or whatever. I think, yeah, that didn’t help the situation.

“I wish they could have handled it in a more mature, professional way. That’s not what happened, so...”

Pegula has never been afraid to speak her mind—whether it’s about gender equality in sports, being the voice of her family during a difficult time, or discussing her heritage. With May being Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, the world No. 3 finds herself an important representative of a community that accounts for 5.7% of the United States population, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Last month, when we sat down with Pegula in Charleston for a profile, the conversation turned to the Asian American Pacific Islander Tennis Association (AAPITA), of which Pegula is a board member.

“It was an easy decision to join the board, once Vania [King, AAPITA President] asked me,” Pegula said. “I’m hoping we can get something going at the US Open, with the large AAPI community in New York City.

“Its been really cool to see, and we have a lot of other great players as well, that have joined.

You realize the importance of representation. Jessica Pegula

In Rome, Pegula was asked “what your Asian-American identity means to you.” Her response, as always, was honest and carefully considered:

“I think for me it means maybe a little bit different,” she began. Jessica’s mother, Kim, was adopted by her grandparents, and “she really didn’t want to know that much [about her heritage] and she didn’t really grow up in it.”

“But sometimes,” Jessica continued, “I forget the impact you have, especially when I see a young Korean girl or family, they come up to me and they love my mom and they love me just because they see themselves being represented on a bigger stage, or an area where there’s not a lot of Asian-Americans—let alone Asian-American women—especially in sports. Especially my mom being in the NFL, NHL, it’s kind of like non-existent.

In 2022, Kim—the CEO and President of Pegula Sports and Entertainment, which owns the NFL’s Buffalo Bills and NHL’s Buffalo Sabres—suffered cardiac arrest. That information wasn’t made public until Jessica disclosed it in a revealing story for The Players’ Tribune.

During our Charleston chat, Pegula once again found the words to explain something that needed to be said. She was also precise in the timing of the announcement, having it be released around the Super Bowl—an event Kim traditionally attended, but would be conspicuously absent for in 2023.

“That was an event my mom always went to for work and meetings and networking,” Jessica said. “It was the first Super Bowl she wasn’t going to be at; it also felt like that was a really special time to share the story with everyone that would be there, and probably asking where she is, or how she’s doing.”

At the same time, Pegula found herself in the spotlight during the Australian Open for her performance, having reached her fourth Grand Slam quarterfinal in her last five majors.

“I thought maybe one time, in the past, maybe I should write something, say something, do something,” she said. “But it never really came as organically as that whole sequence of events.”

On the court in Madrid, Pegula’s voice—one of the strongest in all of tennis—was silenced. That silence was deafening. Off the court in Rome, her voice was heard, loud as ever.