Jessica Pegula is turning the page at the 2024 Billie Jean King Cup Qualifier

LAKE NONA, Fla. - Over the last two years, Jessica Pegula has, largely, been one of the most consistent performers on the WTA tour. Since first breaking the Top 10 on June 6, 2022, she hasn't left; won a pair of WTA 1000 titles; and reached the quarterfinals at five of nine Grand Slam tournaments.

Her 2024 season hasn't followed that tried-and-true script: In seven tournaments, she's won 12 matches, and though she's reached three semifinals, she hasn't played a final since losing to world No. 1 Iga Swiatek in the last match of the season-the championship match of the WTA Final in Cancun-last November. In February, she split with her longtime coach David Witt, too.

But as she comes home to the USTA National Campus this weekend to lead the U.S. team in qualifying round action against Belgium, Pegula says she's turning the page, and hopes that a successful weekend wearing the red, white and blue is exactly the springboard she needs to move the rest of her year forward. 

"As long as I was feeling OK, I wanted to play," Pegula said Thursday on the eve of the tie. "I feel like I always do really well in a team atmosphere, in a team week. I felt like it would be really fun to get a taste of that for this week before going off to Europe, where we have a really long stretch.

"I feel like I'm playing some good tennis. When you start winning some matches, I want to keep playing matches and hopefully keep doing well and keep the confidence going."

The highest-ranked player for either team in the tie (she's flanked by Top 25 players Madison Keys and Emma Navarro, as well as Caroline Dolehide and Taylor Townsend on the U.S. squad), Pegula says that donning the national colors has always been beneficial for her. Couple that with an easy commute to Lake Nona from her Boca Raton home, and the decision to suit up for the qualifying round for the third year in a row was a no-brainer.

"I love the camaraderie ... and being able to help and support each other. Hopefully we can kind of get—all of us—some momentum this week and really take it into the rest of the year. I think that would be great for American tennis, as well."

The first thing Pegula hopes to leave the weekend with is the knowledge that she's helped the U.S. earn a spot in November's Billie Jean King Cup Finals, which she's done for each of the past two years.

In 2022, she chipped in two wins—including the clincher in doubles with Asia Muhammad—in the qualifying round against Ukraine, and last year, she went 2-0 in singles in a 4-0 blanking of Austria in Delray Beach, Fla. The U.S. side is a heavy favorite to do qualify for the Finals, again in Seville, Spain, against Belgium, which is led not by its three Top 100 players but a pair of 19-year-old rookies in Sofia Costoulas and Hanne Vanderwinkel.