Jessica Pegula

Jessica Pegula is an American player born in Buffalo, New York. Her parents, Terry and Kim Pegula, are the principal owners of the NFL's Buffalo Bills, and her father also owns the NHL's Buffalo Sabres. She was introduced to tennis by her family at seven.

Hers was a slow build. A knee injury kept her off the tour for a year and a half between 2013 and 2015, hip surgery kept her out from January to August 2017, and her first WTA title did not arrive until Washington in 2019, when she was 25. Her favourite shot is the backhand down the line, and she has said her best results against Aryna Sabalenka came from changing the direction of the ball and staying unpredictable.

Her strongest summer came in 2024. She won the WTA 1000 title in Toronto and reached the finals in Cincinnati and at the US Open, joining Rosie Casals, Evonne Goolagong Cawley and Serena Williams as the only women in the Open Era to reach all three finals in the same season. She lost the US Open final to Sabalenka and returned to the semi-finals in New York in 2025 and 2026. In doubles, she and Coco Gauff reached the 2022 Roland-Garros final.