What does Jessica Pegula’s last six weeks say about her next six months?

Over the past six weeks, Jessica Pegula nearly completed a tennis triple crown: winning tournaments at three different ranking-point levels. Upon returning to the United States from a middling Middle East swing, she captured the ATX Open, a WTA 250, in Austin; finished runner-up at the Miami Open, the second of back-to-back WTA 1000s in March; and won the Credit One Charleston Open, a WTA 500 that kicked off the clay-court season.

The impressive run lifted Pegula back to her career-high rank of No. 3, made her the top-ranked American (supplanting Coco Gauff) and gave her the most match wins on tour this year—25 in ’25. And while an in-season triple crown eluded her, Pegula finished a career troika in Charleston: she has now won WTA tournaments on hard, grass and clay courts (and all at least 500s).

“I always come from Miami, and I’m always like, ‘I want to play well, I want to do well, I play well here’—but everyone knows I just came from Miami,” Pegula said on Tennis Channel in Charleston. “So if I lose, no one really cares, because they’re like, ‘I can’t believe you even came here anyways.’

“And I came from Miami feeling like I was playing really well, and I was like, ‘If I’m going to come here, I want to win the tournament. Yeah, I don’t know, I manifested this week.”

All told, it’s Pegula’s best start to a season by perhaps a wide margin. While the three-time Australian Open quarterfinalist lost after just three matches in Melbourne, she had never lifted a trophy before June in any season—let alone twice.

“Tennis is funny. Last year was my worst year, and then it turned into my best year ever,” said Pegula. “It’s a long year, so I’m glad I’ve been able to already have really good results. I could probably end it here and say it was still a really good year, but still a long ways to go.”

There are still Pegula skeptics, cautious that her grinding, largely counterpunching style can only take her so far. Steve Tignor was bullish of Pegula in his review of her high-water mark in the Lowcountry, but concluded that “the next six months will be interesting ones for her.”

Then there are Pegula’s records against the two players above her in the rankings, Iga Swiatek and Aryna Sabalenka. She’s 4-6 against No. 2 Swiatek—though 3-2 in their last five encounters—and 2-7 against Sabalenka, the runaway No. 1. Notably, Pegula has lost her last three meetings with the Belarusian, all giant hard-court finals, including at the US Open and Miami.

You might conclude that Pegula beats the players she’s supposed to. Which, if you’re the third-ranked player in the world, means plenty of winning. With 125 wins, and 17 in her last 19 matches, Pegula has the third-most victories on tour since 2023. She will get more shots at Sabalenka and Swiatek this year, and more opportunities to win the one level of title she’s yet to grasp, a Grand Slam.

But before we look too far ahead, as we often do, let’s consider her past six weeks, and what they may mean for the next six months.

In Austin, Pegula was one of two players in the field with a world ranking higher than 46^th. The other, Diana Shnaider, lost her opening match. Before defeating 56^th-ranked McCartney Kessler in the final, Pegula’s best match win by ranking at the tournament was over world No. 74 Anna Blinkova.

While Pegula has greater goals than a 250 title, the no-nonsense performance said a lot to her co-coach, Mark Knowles.

“You can say the level, 250 or whatever, but one thing I know reflecting on background is that you still have opponents on the other side of the net,” he tells me after a practice session at this year’s BNP Paribas Open. “It’s a different type of pressure, and it’s actually a different type of success.”

A mantra in sports is that you can only beat the players in front of you. Pegula has been doing that a lot recently, but it was only a few years ago that she was ranked fifth in the world with just one tournament win to her name. Pegula would win five of her next eight finals.

“You drop down to a 500 or 250, being Top 4 in the world, the expectation is there,” Knowles says. “It was more about, don’t worry about the opposition on the other side, or the level of the event—it’s about demanding the best out of yourself each and every match.”

Even at more prestigious Miami, this single-minded approach held true. While finalists at a 1000 must, as Knowles puts it, “probably beat a legion of Top 10 players,” Pegula may have had one of the most straightforward paths to a 1000-level final—by ranking, I emphasize—in some time. She faced just two seeds before Sabalenka, [32] Anna Kalinskaya and [23] Marta Kostyuk, then opposed the resurgent Emma Raducanu in the quarters and the white-hot Alexandra Eala in the semis.

Given their forms in South Florida, the former US Open champion and current tennis darling were two of the most dangerous unseeded players in the draw.

Regardless, Pegula emerged after playing pressure-packed moments at an extremely high level—while carrying the burden of her lofty ranking. She edged Kalinskaya in a deciding tiebreaker, rallied past Raducanu after losing a second-set tiebreaker, and overcame Eala and her burgeoning fanbase in a humid, late-night thriller.

It’s a different type of pressure, and it’s actually a different type of success. Mark Knowles

“Pressure on her as the overwhelming favorite in this matchup,” said a commentator during Pegula’s opening match in Charleston against 215^th-ranked Iryna Shymanovich—as the top seed strolled to her chair, having just held for 5-0.

There aren’t many matches where Pegula will be the underdog, and she’ll need to summon her absolute best to consistently turn the tables on top challengers. But whether she’s the decided favorite or not, the veteran’s never-satisfied style will suit her well.

Knowles didn’t know that was to come for Pegula when we spoke at Indian Wells, but his words prophesied the trajectory she’s currently on.

“It’s not easy to be the top seed, especially if there’s a huge divide. You’ve got to manage those expectations correctly, and I thought she did a fantastic job,” he says. “It was part of the message that I tried to give her: ‘They don’t give away titles. I don’t care if it’s a 1000, Grand Slam, 250, 500, even if it’s a 125. Titles are titles.

“There’s very few times that you get to come to an event on a Monday, and leave the winner. Savor it.’”

Pegula savored her latest title, over a field in Charleston that included nine Top 20 players, with a chilled cocktail.

“I mean, that’s why it’s here,” she said with a smile at the Tennis Channel desk after taking a sip.

She opted for rest instead of representing the U.S. in Billie Jean King Cup qualifying this week, after originally committing to ties in Slovakia. Pegula’s extended stretch of excellence surely, and justly, influenced her late withdrawal.

The Porsche Tennis Grand Prix in Stuttgart, another WTA clay-court 500 that feels like a 1000, is next on her schedule.

“Gonna try to go get a Porsche,” Pegula said after a few more sips.

Two years ago in Charleston, I sat down with Pegula for an extended interview of my own. Afterward I wrote that:

Jessica Pegula may be the busiest, funniest and bravest player on tour. Now, she’s trying to be the best

Now in her 30s—her recent run started one day after her 31^st birthday—Pegula still is all of those things.

Busy? Charleston was a quick turnaround from Miami, but she won the event for the first time, validating her relatively packed playing schedule.

Funny? She also savored her second-place finish in Miami, as Sabalenka can attest:

Brave? Read my 2023 profile for more on that.

And, Trying to be the best? “It’s always fun winning,” Pegula put it to her friend Shelby Rogers in Charleston. “The more matches you win, you want to keep winning.”

For this late bloomer, wisdom and winning go hand in hand.