From feeling terrible to first into the quarterfinals, Jessica Pegula plays her way into US Open

NEW YORK—Jessica Pegula put a positive spin on things in her pre-US Open press conference.

“Really excited to be back,” the 2024 finalist said last Friday, fresh off a run to the semifinals in the revamped mixed doubles event. “Excited to get going here.”

Just over a week later, Pegula felt more comfortable talking about the state of her game heading into the final major tournament of 2025.

“I felt terrible,” the No. 3 seed confessed on Sunday. “I had a practice Wednesday, and I literally—I think I hit with [Aryna] Sabalenka. She killed me. I was playing terrible.

“Then we went out for a second hour, and I stopped like halfway through the hour and was, like, ‘I'm done, like, this isn't good. I don't know why I'm out here practicing.’”

Pegula gone all but undefeated this time last summer, winning a WTA 1000 title at the National Bank Open and losing only to Sabalenka in back-to-back runner-up finishes in Cincinnati and the US Open, her first Grand Slam final.

She kicked off the grass swing with a third title run of the season in Bad Homburg, but lost in the first round of Wimbledon and the post-SW19 stretch was even more of a struggle. Pegula didn’t win back-to-back matches at any of her hard-court appearances prior to Flushing Meadows, losing three-setters to Leylah Fernandez, Anastasija Sevastova, and Magda Linette.

Though she enjoyed a solid run in mixed doubles, the transition back to singles threatened to derail things entirely for the New York native.

“It was hard, because that was the day after the mixed finish, so we were switching to different balls, and I was a little frustrated,” Pegula explained. “The day was really cold and windy. I was, like, ‘Yeah, I'm done for today. So, I kind of walked off the court, like, not very happy.’”

Feeling trapped, Pegula decided to embrace that feeling entirely; she met up with friends and locked herself in an escape room.

“I was feeling like, I need to just chill and stop getting so frustrated and overthinking all these practices,” Pegula reasoned.

Practicing a different kind of problem-solving appears to have unlocked a door for Pegula, who is into the quarterfinals without dropping a set.

“Very good match I think for me today,” she said after stomping countrywoman Ann Li, 6-1, 6-2, to open play on Arthur Ashe Stadium. “Probably the best match, honestly, I've played since, like, before Wimbledon I feel like from the start to finish. So that was encouraging.

“I was just hitting the ball, doing everything well, executing my strategy very well and, yeah, got through it pretty quick.”

The win over Li was her 41st win of the year—no easy feat given her mid-season slump—and Pegula noted her mid-career fitness improvements have been essential to helping her bounce back and re-build momentum in moments like these.

“Everyone asks how I'm so consistent,” mused Pegula. “It's because I've been able to stay relatively healthy and been able to play a lot of tennis.

“That was always my issue when I was younger is I couldn't stay healthy...After my hip surgery, I definitely had kind of this, like, awakening moment where, one, rehab sucks and I was, like, ‘I cannot do this again. I have to do everything in my power to stay healthy, or else I'm never going to give myself a chance to go out there and compete.’

“So, I really reworked my fitness, my nutrition. It wasn't that I was doing anything wrong before. I don't think I was the most professional in the sense that I didn't understand, like, all of the things I had to be doing or needed to be doing…Nowadays you see 13, 14-year-old girls. It's still instilled. They have a whole team. They have a physio. They have rehab. They have programs. I don't know. I missed that gap or window or whatever it was! I just didn't realize how much more I could be doing.

“So, I definitely kind of had a rude awakening after that to be, like, okay, I really need to focus on this and invest in myself.”

That investment is paying off in New York, with Pegula eager for more positive returns as she awaits the winner of Taylor Townsend vs. Barbora Krejcikova.