A rough practice, a reset, and a clean march into the last eight
Jessica Pegula walked into the 2025 US Open feeling the opposite of ready. The No. 3 seed and 2024 finalist admitted she was rattled just days before the tournament started — so rattled that she cut a practice short after Aryna Sabalenka, the world No. 2, picked her apart. Her words were blunt: she felt terrible, couldn’t find the court, and wondered why she was even out there.
The session turned so lopsided that Pegula stopped midway through the second hour. The timing didn’t help. She’d just switched out of mixed doubles, which meant a change in balls and rhythm. The weather piled on — cold, windy, and unforgiving — the kind of New York afternoon that makes even the basics feel slippery. She left the court frustrated.
So she did something simple and very human: she hit pause. Pegula went to an escape room with friends, had a couple of drinks, and put tennis on the back burner for a night. No overthinking. No extra reps. Just a reset. It was the opposite of the grind-at-all-costs approach that usually defines Grand Slam prep, and it worked.
Since then, Pegula has been the version of herself that made last year’s US Open final and turned the summer swing into a highlight reel. She hasn’t dropped a set on her way to the quarterfinals and hasn’t been dragged into the kind of extended baseline wars that used to sap her early in tournaments. The ball is coming off her strings clean. The backhand is driving crosscourt with bite. The return — always a Pegula strength — is landing deep and rushing opponents from the jump.
The most striking part is the mental shift. Pegula called this stretch a "complete 180" from the summer of 2024, when she rolled in with confidence after lifting the National Bank Open and making back-to-back finals in Cincinnati and New York. This year, the build-up was messy. The doubts were louder. But once the lights went up in Queens, the muscle memory and match instincts took over.
That gap — between feeling bad and playing great — is common on tour, but it rarely shows this starkly. Players often talk about ugly practices and shaky warm-ups before big wins. The difference here is how quickly Pegula shut down the noise. Instead of grinding through a bad day and forcing it, she walked away and came back with a clear head. It’s a tiny decision that says a lot about how top players manage the spikes and dips.
Look at the tennis, and the story gets clearer. Pegula is holding serve efficiently, keeping points in her patterns, and picking her moments to change direction. She’s not chasing highlight shots. She’s building the point, dragging opponents off the spot, then finishing with margin — the blueprint of her rise into the top three. The cleaner her first-strike tennis, the more her return game squeezes opponents into errors. That’s how you survive the first week without drama.
Her mixed doubles cameo also helped — not so much the results, but the reps under the roof and the reads at net. Pegula’s doubles instincts make her a smarter singles player in New York, where swirling winds on the outer courts can punish flat hitters and sloppy footwork. You can tell she’s tracking the ball earlier and cutting off rallies before they turn into dogfights.
There’s also the Sabalenka piece. Getting thumped in a practice hit by one of the tour’s biggest ball-strikers can feel like a cold splash of reality. It can also be freeing. After Sabalenka “killed” her in that session, Pegula removed the expectation to feel perfect before round one. From then on, it wasn’t about chasing a feeling. It was about competing as she was. That shift shows up in the small decisions — smarter targets on big points, fewer wild swings under pressure, and a calmer tempo between shots.
What’s next: the Krejcikova test and the New York factor
Barbora Krejcikova awaits in the quarterfinals, and that’s a very different riddle from the hitters Pegula handled in the early rounds. Krejcikova, a Roland Garros champion in singles and a multiple major winner in doubles, brings variety, shape, and strategy. She loves to mix in the slice, pull opponents wide with the forehand, and sneak forward to finish. If you let her pick her patterns, she drags you into a chess match.
That can actually suit Pegula, who thrives when she’s dictating on her terms and taking time away. The key for her will be first-serve percentage and depth on the return. If she pushes Krejcikova behind the baseline early and keeps the ball out of the Czech’s strike zone, the points get shorter and cleaner — exactly what Pegula wants. If the rallies stretch and Krejcikova starts landing those knifed slices low to the backhand, the rhythm breaks down and the match tilts toward the strategist.
Expect a few things tactically. Pegula will target the ad-court backhand exchange to open forehand space down the line. She’ll test Krejcikova on the run, especially crosscourt, then look to step inside the next ball. On return games, look for Pegula to lean into that compact backhand block, redirecting pace and making the second serve feel like a liability. Krejcikova, on her end, will try to slow the ball, spin it high, and force Pegula to generate everything — a good way to raise the error count on cold or windy shifts.
The conditions matter. New York can flip within an hour — a warm, heavy afternoon that rewards big hitting can turn into a cool, gusty evening where the ball sits up and timing gets tricky. Pegula’s calm between points and her willingness to reset after bad patches will be crucial. So will shot selection. She doesn’t need fireworks. She needs discipline and depth, especially early in games.
There’s also the pressure question. Pegula is the higher seed, the home favorite, and a recent finalist in this stadium. That can feel heavy. But the past week suggests she isn’t carrying the baggage from that rough practice or a choppy summer. The crowds at Flushing Meadows have a way of lifting American players who keep their heads up and their feet moving. Pegula feeds off that energy without letting it rush her — a delicate balance that she’s handled well through four rounds.
Zoom out, and this run speaks to how her game has matured. Early in her career, she could get stuck in neutral against variety or overwhelmed by raw pace. Now she reads patterns quicker, plays with better margins, and trusts the two-shot combo: a deep, solid first ball, then a cleaner strike into space. It’s not flashy tennis, but in New York, with all the noise swirling around, it wins a lot of points.
If she gets through Krejcikova, the path only gets tougher — the top half is loaded with heavy ball-strikers and savvy counterpunchers — but that’s the point of a Slam. For now, the story is simpler: Pegula went from feeling lost in a practice with Sabalenka to carving through the draw without a scratch. That pivot didn’t come from a magic drill or a perfect day. It came from hitting pause, clearing the head, and playing the ball in front of her.
For a player who called this year’s prep a 180 from last summer, the tennis looks familiar where it matters most — clean, calm, and stubborn under pressure. Quarterfinals beckon. The reset is holding.
