Jessica Pegula keeps 2024 US Open loss in perspective

Pegula had her chances. Throughout the contest, the Buffalo, N.Y., native cracked returns that put Sabalenka on her backfoot—not an easy task by any stretch—and went blow-for-blow with the world No. 2, at one point coming out on top of a tremendous 19-shot rally to erase a set point in the first.

But she ultimately couldn’t keep the raw Sabalenka power at bay forever. After a string of unforced errors here and there, Sabalenka suddenly tightened her grip and swung freely. Lessons learned, perhaps, from the US Open result she recorded a year ago.

“She can take the racquet out of your hand a lot of times,” Pegula said in her post-match interview. “I was happy to fight back and give myself a chance…in the end it wasn’t enough, but I’m glad I was able to stay in it and keep giving myself opportunities.”

She will. Perspective, for the player who rides the subway to the US Open grounds, is one of her strongest assets. She knows what it took to get to Arthur Ashe Stadium on the final day of the women’s tournament: Almost a decade languishing just below the world’s Top 100, surgeries on her hip and knee that saw that ranking plummet into the 700s, six straight Grand Slam quarterfinal losses before finally pushing to the next round for the first time at this tournament.

“I just have a lot of awareness and perspective of what my journey has been like,” she said of what makes her such a tough out on the court. “What's always helped me as I have gotten higher ranked and become a better player is just keeping perspective.”

That, she says, will help her recontextualize the loss to one of the greatest players in the world once she gets some distance from the result. Importantly, the 30-year-old debutante Grand Slam finalist said she never felt overawed by the occasion or the raucous crowd in the stands. 

"He's like, ‘Oh, yeah, I did!’ I thought that was really cute. He was like, ‘No, he loved it!’ I was like, ‘Did he? Or did he really think you were kind of crazy?’... That was kind of a cool moment for him because he's a diehard fan.”

All in all, Pegula knows she’ll take a lot of positives from the experience…eventually. Perspective, again, is her strongpoint. 

“If I can't take confidence from this, there's got to be something wrong,” Pegula said. “I mean, I think I've taken confidence from winning a 250 [tournament], from winning a 1000 [tournament], from being able to win another 1000, [so I have] multiple ones now. Then to be able to be a Grand Slam finalist, I think that was kind of the last thing for me, right? I made a lot of quarterfinals, but can I make a semi? Can I be a contender to actually win a Grand Slam? ... I think for sure I will take a lot of confidence from this .. maybe in an hour or two.”