Cotton Eye Jess: The artist formerly known as Jessica Pegula takes Cincinnati by storm

CINCINNATI, Ohio—If it hadn’t been for Cotton Eye Joe…Jessica Pegula probably would have gotten more questions about her second career WTA 1000 win at the Omnium Banque Nationale.

“I had more questions about ‘Cotton Eye Joe’ than anything else!” she laughed at the end of a breezy Media Day press conference at the Western & Southern Open.

The world No. 3 had just arrived in Cincinnati after a wild weekend in Montréal that took her from the lows of a “Cotton Eye Joe” audio snafu that interrupted her semifinal against Iga Swiatek to the high of winning the title in 49 minutes the following day. The tournament’s DJ reprised the 1995 Rendex one-hit wonder shortly after Pegula put down a 6-1, 6-0 victory over Liudmila Samsonova as a surreal exclamation point.

For her part, Pegula is taking her brush with internet virality in her inimitably casual stride.

“Oh my god,” she said with a laugh on Monday. “Everyone is calling me Cotton Eye Jess. Someone sent me a headline on CNN that was like, ‘Jessica Pegula wins Montréal, overcomes Cotton Eye Joe debacle,’ and I’m like what?

“For the rest of my life, I will be tied to that moment forever. I will never hear that song and not think about that. I’m just glad that I ‘overcame’ it and it didn’t bring me down.”

As Caroline Wozniacki has become inexorably linked to Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline,” so too has Jessica Pegula to “Cotton Eye Joe”—for at least as long as she can help it.

“Someone was telling me that you can pick your walk-out song for the US Open and they were saying, ‘You’ve gotta pick “Cotton Eye Joe,”’ and I was like, ‘No, I am not picking that song!’ In New York City, always during the Open, I’m always listening to 50 Cent. I love 50 Cent, so it would be something on that level, not ‘Cotton Eye Joe.’

“Maybe it’s good luck,” she continued with a sigh. “Maybe I need to keep it going. I don’t know.”

Born a year before the Eurodance hit took over American shores in the mid-90s, Pegula nonetheless has fond memories of the song and its rodeo-themed line dance.

“It’s one of those things where I don’t know if I could do it right now, but if it came on with a couple people, it would come back to me. Of course, I knew it, and they play it a lot at hockey games, so I always remember doing it at hockey games.

“I guess that’s maybe why it came on in Canada?” she added, now totally lost in thought. “I don’t know. There’s so many questions that have just not been answered.”

Cotton Eye Jess will play her first match in Cincinnati against either Martina Trevisan or Bernarda Pera.