From Bad Homburg to SW19, Pegula lands with a title and a mission

WIMBLEDON -- After losing her first match at the Berlin Open, Jessica Pegula made the difficult decision to play a tournament the week before a Grand Slam.

It paid off nicely, as Pegula won the title at the Bad Homburg Open, defeating Iga Swiatek in Saturday’s final, 6-4, 7-5. That concluded a run through the field that featured wins over No. 9-ranked Emma Navarro and No. 30 Linda Noskova.

Less than 24 hours later, she was sitting in front of more than a dozen reporters in the state-of-the-art Wimbledon media center.

“Quick turnaround for me,” Pegula said, “but happy to get rolling. I just got here last night, so I don’t quite feel like I’m here yet. Hopefully, I get one more day in me and I’ll feel a little more settled in.”

On Tuesday, the No. 3 seed plays her first-round match against Elisabetta Cocciaretto.

Pegula, whose thoughtful answers always draw a crowd, bantered with reporters on a number of topics:

You’re the first WTA player this year to win titles on three different surfaces (Charleston/clay, Austin/hard, Bad Homburg/grass). How does that help you coming into Wimbledon?

I didn’t really think about that until I saw the stat. It’s a cool kind of thing that maybe gives me a little more confidence, but right now we’re on grass … so the rest kind of doesn’t matter that much. My focus is on the next week and hopefully playing some good tennis. I’ve had a great start to the year already.

We’ve had dominant spells from Iga Swiatek, and now it’s a dominant spell from Aryna Sabalenka. Looking at this tournament though, where Aryna hasn’t won and Iga hasn’t won, does it feel to you to be one of the more open tournaments that we’ve had?

I feel like it’s been that way for a few years now. With Marketa [Vondrousova], Barbora [Krejcikova], Elena [Rybakina] winning, it’s a tricky surface. Honestly, I feel like it’s not lucky -- but there’s a lot of weird points and momentum swings and when someone’s serving well, there’s not much you can really do. Sometimes it’s one let chord, you get the break and the person wins the match.

If it’s one point and a break, and it’s Rybakina or Aryna serving really well, that can be really tricky. Or Marketa, whose drop-shotting and slicing and making people uncomfortable, same thing with Ons [Jabeur]. Barbora also does that really well.

A lot was made of Sabalenka’s reaction after losing the final at Roland Garros. At this point in your career, are you still learning about that after a loss you have to act a certain way?

Maybe I’m just a little lucky, because I’m not a super, overly emotional person. Some players play with a lot more emotion and feel a lot more things, which can be good and can be bad. It’s hard. To me, everyone that I know as an athlete has those moments all the time. It’s normal to be angry or frustrated or really sad -- sometimes it just hits you. You’re playing in a really high-stress environment for hours, and all of a sudden you’re sitting there and you lost.

It’s normal for emotions to overcome you and sometimes you really don’t know why. I broke my water bottle after the French in the hallway. Maybe nobody saw it, but things happen.

This was Swiatek’s best-ever grass result. What was it like playing her in the final?

Her footwork is so good, I think that’s really important on grass. That definitely is one of her strengths or something she can use as she continues to play on it. I thought she was serving well, she was serving big. She aced me nine times, the biggest she’s served against me in any of the other surfaces. Maybe that was intentional, I don’t know, trying to get more free points. I thought it was a high-level match, to be honest, from both of us. We were both serving really well, returning well, we had some really good points. She still moves really well on grass, too. Which is a huge advantage.

How important is the serve on grass, compared to other surfaces?

Really important. It tends to take the spins, I think a lot more. It’s a little harder to defend for the returner. I always feel like on the hard or the clay, the men and the women can dig out and slid or do something kind of different but the grass is just, it’s hard. You don’t always get a true bounce. It hits the chalk, it checks up, it spins differently. It’s gotten slower over the years, so I don’t think the serve is as prominent, obviously, as it used to be. But it’s hard to break on these surfaces, and a little harder to return. So you get a lot more free points or an easy second ball that helps people hold a lot easier.

What were your thoughts on the men’s final at Roland Garros?

I was at home. I didn’t really turn it on until someway in between those five-and-a-half hours. Obviously, I thought Jannik [Sinner] was going to win and then just flipped. I was on a call, and I couldn’t believe Carlos [Alcaraz] was able to save match points and come back. It was so long, I was like, `Somebody just win.’  I was pretty upset after my loss to [Lois] Boisson, wanted to make another quarterfinal. Then to see him lose like that was a million times worse. It made me feel a little bit better about my [fourth-round] loss. It’s all about perspective. You’re thinking, `Yeah, tennis is really hard.’