San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Down under, a tennis star cheers on her family’s pro football team
MELBOURNE, Australia — As a Pittsburgh Steelers fan whose parents ended up buying the NFL’s Buffalo Bills, Jessica Pegula has had to adapt. But she is in deep now, extolling the leadership virtues of quarterback Josh Allen even as she competes in the Australian Open and taking the court in an outfit whose red, white and blue hues summon the Bills’ colors, thanks to her sponsor thinking ahead.
“It was so random, but I’m like this is perfect,” Pegula said.
She even signed the camera lens after her thirdround singles victory with a tidy note that read: “Bills you’re next.”
“I’m like come on, I backed myself up, now you guys got to get the win,” Pegula said with a chuckle ahead of the Bills’ divisional playoff game against the Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday.
Stacking up wins would be an outcome to savor for the Pegula family, and Jessica has provided another strong run down under.
It was in Australia that she launched her breakthrough season in 2021 by reaching the quarterfinals. At 27, she is on the verge of leaping back into the top 20 whether she wins or loses in her fourth-round rematch with Maria Sakkari.
Pegula has bounced back from worse. A child of privilege by her own admission,
she has shown perseverance and pluck in her quest to become a Grand Slam contender. Yes, she had access to private coaching and abundant support from her family: Her 70-year-old father, Terry, is a businessman who made his $5.7 billion fortune primarily in natural gas and in real estate development.
But Pegula had to overcome major knee and hip surgery in her late teens and early 20s that required extensive rehabilitation before she finally broke into the elite.
“She was on her way up twice and had to start over again,” said Michael Joyce, who coached her for six years, beginning in 2011 after coaching Maria Sharapova. “Jessie could easily have thrown in the towel obviously with her family and her situation, and the fact that she kept coming back was special. ”
Pegula said she has sometimes felt self-conscious about her family’s
wealth, concerned it might make others uncomfortable. Joyce said she was often hesitant to organize training sessions with outsiders at the family’s luxurious home in Boca Raton, Fla., with its two tennis courts — clay and hardcourt.
“I was maybe kind of trying to hide it a little bit,” Pegula said. “Then I think I kind of embraced it a little bit, not like over the top, but I think once I became more comfortable and I knew I was doing the hard work and all that I was, like, hey I do have a different story but maybe it’s kind of a cool story. Maybe it’s OK if I embrace the Bills and the teams a little bit more and stuff like that.”
She added, “But I’ve always been kind of low key. I don’t like to flaunt, and I think that’s why I’ve been able to be successful, too.”
At 5-foot-7, Pegula is not the most imposing athlete on a women’s tour increasingly inhabited by taller players with explosive power and movement. But she has exquisite timing, excellent fundamentals, a fine grasp of tactics and an even temperament.
“It used to drive me nuts,” Joyce said. “She could go through a whole tournament without one fist pump.”
Equanimity can be useful in a brutally competitive sport where success is precarious. One of Pegula’s closest friends, Jennifer Brady, was an Australian Open finalist last year but has missed the past two majors with a chronic foot condition.
It can all seem fragile, all the more so given the coronavirus pandemic. Pegula married her longtime boyfriend, Taylor Gahagen, in October at the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, N.C., but her coach, David Witt, tested positive for the coronavirus and she, as a close contact, withdrew from the Billie Jean King Cup team event.
The next day she tested positive. So did her husband.
“We had a COVID honeymoon basically,” Pegula said. “We were in our house for two weeks.”
Although Jessica was born in Buffalo, the Pegulas lived in Pittsburgh when she was young.
“We were really not Bills fans, to be honest, but that’s obviously flipped,” she said, preparing to check the time difference carefully from Australia and watch Sunday’s big game.