Jessica Pegula: Inching her way toward Grand Slam glory?

At Roland Garros in May, a reporter pointed out that Jessica Pegula, then ranked No. 3 in the WTA, was “seemingly” not really part of the tour’s ”Big Three”—comprised of Iga Swiatek, Aryna Sabalenka and Elena Rybakina. Another player might have taken umbrage at the question, but Pegula merely laughed at the awkward phrasing.

“That was just so funny,” she said, in a signature Pegula moment. “‘Seemingly you're not part of it.’ No, I’m not part of it, but hopefully one day I will be. Hopefully, this year.”

Pegula, a poised, articulate, 29-year-old and gifted with a high tennis IQ, knew that her subordinate status owed largely to the fact that, unlike her rivals at the top, she has yet to win a Grand Slam singles title. Currently ranked No. 5, Pegula has reached six major quarterfinals, or half of the last dozen she’s played. It’s a tribute, albeit a backhanded one, to Pegula’s consistency.

Can she go even further?

It’s too late for Pegula to tick that Grand Slam box this year, but a win at the ongoing WTA Finals (where first-time qualifier Pegula lost all of her singles and doubles a year ago) would be a sign of great progress. However it plays out, the Buffalo, N.Y. native moved one crucial step closer to the elite level in Cancun, Mexico with successive wins in the round-robin stage over No. 4 Rybakina and No. 1 Sabalenka.

It seems that Pegula will start the upcoming year standing at the crossroads between the very good and the great.

“To me, anyone who can make the quarters at 50 percent of her recent tournaments is awfully close to winning one,” Jimmy Arias, tennis director at the IMG Academy, recently told me.

Arias, who also has Buffalo-area roots and and advised Pegula early in her career, added this stunning detail: This WTA “overachiever” had never won an official tournament of any kind—not in the juniors, not on the ITF, not nada—until Pegula bagged the title at Washington D.C. in 2019, at age 25.

“I’ve never heard anything like that in tennis,” Arias said. “That had to be a big hurdle, and she managed to get over it. So why not win a major?”

It’s a perfect question for a devil’s advocate. Due to her record in majors and the nature of her game, it’s easy to cast Pegula’s ambitions in “glass half full, glass half empty” terms. She lacks the outright athleticism of the top WTA contenders led by her doubles partner, Coco Gauff. Pegula also lacks a killer shot in an era when so many worship at the altar of power. Pegula admits to “not being a naturally good mover,” and at 5’7” she’s not physically imposing.

You don’t see much racquet-head speed from Jessie, but the ball gets to you in a hurry. She can hit rally ball after rally ball and then, with an identical stroke, the ball is traveling 20 M.P.H. faster, with depth and weight. Jimmy Arias

But experts including Paul Annacone, former coach of legends and a Tennis Channel analyst, sees no reason why any of that would prevent Pegula from winning a major. He told me, “The combination of her tennis intelligence and lack of weaknesses amounts to a weapon.”

Annacone added that the difference between winning or losing a major for a player in Pegula’s ranking shoes is a matter of a few points, which means significant changes in her game are not only unnecessary, they could be damaging.

“She’s not going to come out and start serving at 125 M.P.H. every point, anyway. She’s not suddenly going to become a net rusher. Her game is her game, and it’s an asset. If I were her coach I would just continually be trying to get better in general.”

That position strikes a familiar chord for Pegula, whose patience and diligence are are also unsung weapons. She’s an incrementalist who, with the aid of David Witt (her coach since 2019), has honed her all-around game and style into such a smooth entity that it can lull the eye in a way that more flashy—and less effective—players do not. If you believe Pegula fatally lacks power, take note of this observation by Arias:

“You don’t see much racquet-head speed from Jessie, but the ball gets to you in a hurry. She can hit rally ball after rally ball and then, with an identical stroke, the ball is traveling 20 M.P.H. faster, with depth and weight. That’s why, when you watch her play, you can’t really pinpoint a weapon. Even I can’t even figure out how it happens.”

After Pegula’s outstanding win over Sabalenka in Cancun on Tuesday, Tennis Channel commentators expressed surprise at her ability to match groundstrokes with the world No. 1. Smiling, she corrected them: “I hit really hard. People don’t seem to think I do. I don’t know why they say that. . . maybe it’s because I hit flat. Or it doesn’t look that way on TV.”

Physically, Pegula produced a blueprint for ultimate success at a major in her upset of Sabalenka: The average speed of her groundstrokes was outstanding. Her serve was damaging. (“Her serve may be at the weaker end among top players, but when she serves well she wins,” Arias said.) Pegula returned very well, often from inside the baseline, against a player accustomed to blowing the ball by opponents. He consistency and defense were superb.

Pegula has become as complete and well-balanced—if not spectacular player—as exists in the WTA. Earlier this year, when asked what she had been working to improve, she replied: “It’s kind of a little bit of everything. The margins [near the top] become very small. At the same time, you don’t need to change your game, but I think just fine-tuned things.”

It follows that the final frontier in Pegula’s Grand Slam quest lies in her mind.

True, in all but her first major quarterfinal Pegula was beaten by a Grand Slam champion—or, in the case of Marketa Vondrousova at Wimbledon this year, a player who would win the event. But the way Pegula squandered a big third-set lead in that clash tripped a red flag, pointing to her lingering tendency to become tentative at crucial, high-stakes moments. To dial her game back just that little bit, to with less tolerance for risk.

Her game is her game, and it’s an asset. Paul Annacone

It’s tough to ask a player as conservative as Pegula to be more bold when it really counts..

“Jessie still needs to get out of her comfort zone,” Wimbledon icon Martina Navratilova told WTA media staff recently. “When push comes to shove, she plays it safe—and she needs to not do that. Playing it safe, she’s not going to beat the players that are ranked higher than her.”

Nobody knows how Pegula has processed her losses in recent majors: as a quarterfinal career Slam to be celebrated, or a reminder of lost opportunities, a jinx. Annacone pointed out that Ivan Lendl struggled mightily before he broke through as a Grand Slam champion. Felix Auger-Aliassime lost eight successive ATP Tour finals before he won his first one (and he’s now bagged four consecutive finals). Arias lost the last eight finals he appeared in and told me, “The questions started after the fourth or fifth one, and it became frustrating to always hear them.”

“Sure it’s frustrating,” Annacone said about Pegula’s conundrum. “It makes for great conversation. But if you’re a player you just have to keep chipping away at it. You have to believe. And a lot comes down to being true to your game. The more times you’ve there [in contention] the easier and more normal it becomes.”

Pegula has certainly been true to her game and, as we have been coming to learn, there’s “seemingly” a lot more to that game than meets the eye.