With wins over Brady & Anisimova, Jessica Pegula's game fits the bill

The NFL’s Buffalo Bills have a tortured history of big wins followed by bigger letdowns. There were its four consecutive AFC championships in the early 1990s—all forgotten because, each time, Buffalo went on to lose the Super Bowl. In 2003, the Bills opened the season with a 31-0 shellacking of Tom Brady’s New England Patriots at Ralph Wilson Stadium. Buffalo bumbled its way to a 6-10 finish; Brady, as he often did, led the peerless Patriots to a Super Bowl victory. Five years later, the Bills sprinted to a 5-1 record, inspiring some Kool-Aid and Labatt Blue drinkers to purchase Trent Edwards jerseys. They completed it at 7-9, and Edwards was essentially done for the league.

So it went, for Western New York’s star-crossed football team, until 2019, when a young, fearless roster found itself 5-1 in mid-October—and two months later, had clinched a playoff spot. For the sanity of my fellow Bills fans, I’ll omit the ending, but the season was an unqualified success in the moment, and it bodes well for the team’s future.

I couldn’t help but draw some parallels, then, when Jessica Pegula, a Buffalo native and the daughter of Bills’ owners Kim and Terry Pegula, not only beat a fine tennis player named Brady on Sunday at the Western & Southern Open (as opposed to the football-playing Brady, who is 30-3 against the Bills), but followed it up with another impressive win, over 28th-ranked Amanda Anisimova.

Pegula, now 4-0 in Flushing Meadows after qualifying for the main draw, is making the most of the present. But the 26-year-old late-riser, who cracked the Top 100 for the first time just last year, has grander ambitions—which she’ll get a taste of next week, in the very same venue, at the US Open.

“I definitely want to do well here, and I want to do well next week,” Pegula said after her win over her friend Jennifer Brady, the champion in Lexington and a trendy pick in New York. “I really want to do well at Slams; I think it’s time.

“I’m not really afraid to talk about it.”

There are no shortage of talented young Americans in the WTA. Because of that, Pegula's recent rise may have been overlooked. (Getty Images)

Pegula’s history at the majors is scant in both quantity and quality. She’s won just a single main-draw match, way back in 2005, when she made her Grand Slam debut at the US Open. Since then, she’s taken five first-round losses. Had the coronavirus not stopped tennis, Pegula would have been ranked high enough to compete at Wimbledon, and provided she travels to Europe next month, she’ll have a place in Roland Garros’ main draw.

Despite her lack of achievement at the sport’s pillar events, though, Pegula more than maintained her Top 100 standing in 2019, climbing as high as 55th and finishing 76th. Deep runs at her first two tournaments, in Newport Beach, Calif. (where she lost to Bianca Andreescu in a three-set final) and Midland, Mich. (where she again finished runner-up) signaled a turning point. It would take until the summer for her progress to be fully realized, but in Washington, D.C., Pegula won her first WTA title at the Citi Open.

WATCH—Pegula's champion's speech at the 2019 Citi Open:

Proving that 2019 was no fluke, Pegula began 2020 with a run to the final of Auckland, where only Serena Williams prevented her from claiming another title.

“I’ve been playing really well outside of the Slams, and then [at the Slams] I’ve just not been playing my best,” said Pegula. “So many points [available], too—it would help my ranking so much.”

Against Brady and Anisimova, Pegula showed what will be vital to success at the US Open: her bread and butter—wings and blue cheese?—shots, the serve and forehand. They were powerful, accurate and reliable. Together, they wore down the supremely fit Brady in a 7-6 (5), 6-4 first-rounder.

On Monday against Anisimova, Pegula’s steady serves and heavy forehands demanded the teenager’s flat returns and groundstrokes be in mid-season form. They were far from. While Anisimova, who has played plenty of tennis this summer but has rarely looked comfortable on court, put up a fight early on, her serve wilted and her game failed to pressure Pegula. In an hour an 19 minutes, she had her fourth triumph in five days.

“I like that the courts are faster,” said Pegula of the Laykold hard courts, newly installed at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center. “I think I’m playing really well, and I’m liking the conditions right now.”

With that comfort level in mind, and a scarcity of tour-level match opportunities amidst the pandemic, Pegula will also compete in doubles at both the Western & Southern and US Opens. Alongside Shelby Rogers, who scored a big win of her own earlier this month, she’ll enter the doubles draws as a wild card.

While many compartmentalize doubles as a discipline to practice sharp footwork and precise volleys, Pegula sees it as yet another opportunity to work on her go-to shots.

“We both hit the ball big; she has a great serve, great forehand,” Pegula said of Rogers, a past doubles partner. “[It’s] going to be a really good combo.”

Pegula's forehand has been rock-solid in New York, much as it was in Auckland this January, when the Buffalo, N.Y. native reached the final. (Getty Images)

Having participated in World TeamTennis this summer (where she played a substantial amount of doubles), Pegula understands what the bubble life entails. She has more recent reps on hard courts than many higher-ranked players from overseas—not that ranking has been the determining factor thus far in New York. Most importantly, Pegula is confident. It’s taken her to the round of 32 this week, and that should be her goal next week as well.

But while so much will look the same at the Western & Southern Open and the US Open, the latter will have an unmistakably different feel. Those ranking points Pegula covets will be something she can’t help but think about as she prepares to serve or lines up a forehand. She may not need the prize money as much as fellow players around her ranking, but from a young age, Pegula has poured herself into tennis, much as her parents have done in their competitive worlds.

“They’re all hockey and football, that’s the thing that they do,” Pegula said. “Obviously they support me, but tennis is kind of my own thing now, it has been for a while. I prefer it that way.”

Simply put, there’s much more to gain, much more to lose, and a lot more prestige when the main event begins next week in Flushing Meadows. And as the Bills have shown so many times, it’s not how you start, but how you finish.

On Tuesday, Pegula reached the quarterfinals of the Western & Southern Open with a 6-2, 2-6, 6-3 win over No. 5 seed Aryna Sabalenka: