Jessica Pegula loses Wimbledon first round after winning Bad Homburg title

Day 2 of Wimbledon kicked off with the biggest upset of the 2025 Championships thus far as No. 3 seed Jessica Pegula fell in the first round in under an hour to Elisabetta Cocciaretto, 6-2, 6-3.

Pegula arrived to the All England Club days after winning her second career grass-court title at the Bad Homburg Open, but couldn’t convert the momentum into a Wimbledon run against the No. 116th-ranked Coacciaretto, who advanced on No. 2 Court in 58 minutes flat.

The 31-year-old American enjoyed a Grand Slam breakthrough in 2024 when she reached her first Grand Slam final at the US Open, but she has not made it past the fourth round in her three subsequent major main-draw appearances despite solid results on all surfaces this season. Though her Roland Garros campaign ended abruptly in the fourth round when she fell in three sets to French wild card Loïs Boisson, who went on to reach the semifinals, Pegula looked back in form on grass when she won the title in Bad Homburg.

In the final pre-Wimbledon warm-up event, Pegula scored a straight-sets victory over former world No. 1 Iga Swiatek to win her ninth WTA title, but was out of sorts from the outset against Cocciaretto, a former world No. 29. The 24-year-old made it to the third round of Wimbledon back in 2023—where, ironically, she lost to Pegula—and reached the semifinals of the Libéma Open in ‘s-Hertogenbosch last month, but with a 1-7 record vs. the Top 10, wasn’t expected to trouble the in-form Pegula on Tuesday.

Still, it was Cocciaretto with the strong start as play opened on No. 2 Court, the Italian breaking Pegula twice to capture the opening set.

Pegula kept things closer in the second set but netted a backhand down break point to hand Cocciaretto a 4-3 lead, one the unseeded underdog converted into her first career Top 5 victory. Cocciaretto became the first Italian woman to defeat a Top 3 seed at Wimbledon in the Open Era, and the first Italian woman to defeat a Top 3 seed at any major tournament since 2015 when Flavia Pennetta and Roberta Vinci upset Simona Halep and Serena Williams, respectively, to reach that year's final.

Pegula’s exit opens up the bottom half of the draw for fellow seeds Swiatek, 2022 champion Elena Rybakina, and two-time Grand Slam finalist Karolina Muchova, all of whom shared a quarter with the American. They will all be in action later on Tuesday.