Jessica Pegula has done it: The 30-year-old star tennis player from Buffalo, New York, has reached her first Grand Slam final at the US Open.
In what looked at first to be a relatively swift expulsion from the tournament after taking only one game in the first set of her semifinals match against the Czech Republic’s Karolína Muchová, Pegula clawed back to win the next two sets 6-4, 6-2. Pegula had not previously advanced beyond the quarterfinals of any major—a feat she managed in the round prior with a decisive upset of the world’s number-one player and the number-one seed at the Open, Iga Świątek.
“It was looking a little rough there for a while,” Pegula said after beating Muchová. “Somehow, I found a way…the crowd really helped me get some adrenaline going. I wasn’t even nervous, I was just flat. Luckily, I was able to adapt in the nick of time.”
In late July last year, Pegula met with me at the Four Seasons Washington DC on the day before the start of the city’s Mubadala Citi Open, a tournament she had won back in 2019. It was peak mid-Atlantic summer, which is to say it was extremely humid and buggy. Yet Pegula, then ranked third on the WTA Tour and now slotted in at sixth, exuded only chill, unbothered vibes as she reclined into a chair.
In her own words, she’s “pretty low-key.” Equally notable, though, is her quiet yet intense manner during matches, reflected in her powerful, flat groundstrokes, solid baseline coverage, and an ability to sort of astutely assert herself without theatrics or too much flair.
Pegula has used this brand of grit to clinch six tour titles over her career thus far, most recently Canada’s 1000-level Open in Toronto in August. To note, Pegula then made it to the finals of Cincinnati a week later—another 1000-level event; these tournaments are just below Slams in terms of points and prestige. In Ohio, she played and lost to Aryna Sabalenka, the very same opponent she’ll face in the finals of the US Open on Saturday (more on this in a moment).
Over the past year, Pegula has replaced her long time coach, David Witt, with a new team consisting of Mark Knowles and Mark Merklein—and so far, the changeup seems to be paying dividends. Fresh energy and blood is always helpful (as a number of players with new coaches have also demonstrated this year: Just look at Frances Tiafoe, who hired none other than Witt).
She’s also running faster than ever and tracking down trickier balls, and her net game has improved in tandem. Taken together, it’s made for an impressive showing for a player known mainly as a baseline warrior. (It was especially thrilling to see this amplified mobility against the imposing Świątek, a match Pegula owned from the opening game. Admittedly, Świątek was not her best against Pegula—but all the same, Pegula has the winning record in their head-to-head stats.)
Buffalo-born Pegula comes from a gilded background. Her parents, Terry and Kim, are billionaires who made their fortune in the energy space (as it happens, semifinalist Emma Navarro, who lost to Sabalenka last night, is also from a billionaire family). The Pegulas own the NFL’s Buffalo Bills and the NHL’s Buffalo Sabres. Pegula has, in accord, been dubbed one of the world’s richest tennis players, but she’s understated enough that you wouldn’t guess it if you didn’t know it. All the same, that tax bracket can make things complicated.
“I know what haters say,” she told me in DC. “‘The only reason she’s good is because she has money.’ But for the most part, I think people have found that it’s an interesting story. It’s made me think, Okay—I’m not going to hide from this.”
She added: “It’s also fun to see this kind of crossover with Bills fans—even if I am far away, like in Qatar, I see people in the stands wearing Bills jerseys.”
In January last year, the Bills player Damar Hamlin went into cardiac arrest after a tackle, prompting global headlines. A few weeks later, at the Australian Open, Pegula wore Hamlin’s number, 3, as a patch on her skirt to show support. The gesture underscored Pegula’s unique position of being able to bridge an intrinsically American athletic bastion with a different, smaller—though global—sport.
Off the court, Pegula has a deep love of dogs (even if they’re not allowed to stay with her at the Four Seasons). Along with her husband, Taylor Gahagen, she co-runs A Lending Paw, a charity that supports rescuing dogs, as well as nurturing (and paying for) them to become service animals.
Of that project, Pegula said: “We wanted to help people afford service dogs. Not only is it about dogs helping people, it’s about people helping dogs, because we only work with rescues. It goes both ways.” Ahead of last year’s US Open, Pegula hosted an event at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center where A Lending Paw linked a newly trained dog with a veteran.
Pegula also recently relaunched her skincare line, Ready 24. “I like to say it’s adaptable skin care,” she said. “It’s for people on the go, not just athletes, and people that might want to mix their regimen with other products. It’s very basic. Growing up, I had horrible skin, and usually when I did less, my skin got better.” Ready 24 sells a cleanser, a mist and moisturizers, though Pegula said her holy grail is to develop an effective sunblock—something that’s trickier than it sounds. (It’s also a top concern for athletes in particular, who spend much of their time in the sun and who are often sweating.)
This all amounts to a rarefied American tennis story, which will see its biggest moment at the US Open’s women’s final on Saturday.
“If you would have told me in the beginning of the year that I would be in the final of the US Open, I would have, like, laughed, so hard, because that’s just where my head was at, not thinking I would be here,” said Pegula in Queens. “It’s a childhood dream; it’s what I wanted when I was a kid… my home country, my home slam… it’s perfect, really.”
As for the match itself, Pegula knows what she needs to do to optimize her chances against Sabalenka, a player who is hungry to redeem her loss to Coco Gauff in the finals last year, and whose ultra-powerful game is especially locked in at present.
“In Cincinnati, [Aryna] served unbelievably,” said Pegula. “And I felt like I still had chances in that match. I know that I can have a game that can possibly frustrate her… I need to be aggressive, but not overdo it. I just have to play my game, which is kind of what I do already.”
At our DC meeting, Pegula told me something interesting, foreshadowing what has now transpired. At that point, she had made quarterfinal appearances at multiple Slams, but hadn’t converted that kind of playing level into key wins on the biggest stages.
She told me she wasn’t worried.
“Sometimes I say to myself, ‘Okay, do I need something more? What can I do?’ But then I think: I’ve beaten a lot of these girls at least once,” she said. “I’m right there. I’m right where I need to be, so it’s really just about finding a bit more belief in the big moments. I don’t want to be that person overthinking and changing things. It’s not how I am. I’ve seen players try and change their game to get there, and it takes them out of what they’re actually really good at. They kind of lose confidence when that happens. I don’t think I’ll ever be like that.”