Saturday night I wrote about Jessica Pegula advancing to the championship match of the Credit One Charleston Open as she rallied from a 4-2 deficit in the third set to defeat Ekaterina Alexandrova.
I led off the story with the comment that Jessica Pegula “will not go away easily.”
By Sunday night, Pegula had proven that statement true, but she didn’t even have to go to three sets in Sunday’s championship match against Sofia Kenin. This time, Pegula didn’t wait around until the third set. How about six games into the second set
of the championship match against Sofia Kenin? She was down 5-1 and double set point. And she was tired.
Everyone knows what happened. Between TV and the huge crowd watching in person, they know that Pegula survived second and third set points in the seventh game of the second set, and then won five more games in succession, the last one at love, to claim her first clay-court title on the WTA Tour with a 6-3, 7-5 victory over the unseeded but Grand Slam tournament winner Kenin.
“I think my perseverance won me a lot of matches this week, especially on the clay,” Pegula said.
You can say that again, especially going back to the semifinal flop by Alexandrova just when it looked like she would be in the championship match rather than Pegula.
So, Pegula has proven in no uncertain terms that she is a really tough player to beat.
“I feel like you have to have kind of that grittiness and that toughness, because the serve isn’t as effective,” the tournament’s top seed said. “There’s not as many free points, and I think winning a couple of tough points or a tough game can kind of turn the momentum of a set or a match, and I felt like I was able to do that multiple times this week.”
As she recalled when she was down 5-1 in the second set, she said, “I actually said I think I hit a wall. I just got tired because I think I was realizing I was going to go to a third (set), and I was kind of like, oh, I don’t know if I can do this again. Like I’ve done the last couple of matches. Even in Miami, playing a couple tough three sets.”
And about the Credit One doubling its purse next year. “I was like, not this year? Not the year I won it. I’m just kidding. I think that’s amazing,” she said.
“I mean, what Ben Navarro and the Navarro family has done for tennis in the U.S. and women’s tennis especially with doing that is incredible, and I think he has been inspired by seeing how well Emma (Navarro) has done and how much women’s tennis can really grow and her being a superstar in her own right.”
James Beck (843-795-3584, h) was the 2003 winner of the USTA National Media Award for print media. A 1995 MBA graduate of The Citadel, he can be reached at Jamesbecktennis@gmail.com.
