By Chris Oddo | @TheFanChild | Thursday August 15, 2024
There may be benefits to lacking time on the tennis tour, and Jessica Pegula, who missed her faire share in 2024 resulting from harm, is hoping to profit throughout a time of 12 months when a lot of her friends are flat-out worn down from the grind.
Pegula, contemporary off successful the title in Toronto final week, instructed reporters that she feels she is brisker than standard this time of 12 months, resulting from the truth that accidents saved her off the court docket earlier within the season.
“I missed plenty of the start of the 12 months, so I really feel mentally fairly good the place another individuals may really feel extra run down,” she mentioned, in line with David Kane of Tennis.com. “I’m mentally ready to grind out the tip of the 12 months greater than I might be the previous few years.”
Pegula missed time in January and early February with a neck harm, then skipped the European clay season resulting from a rib harm, amongst different issues.
Paradoxically, it bodes nicely for the 30-year-old six-time WTA Tour titlist. With lots of the tour’s prime gamers struggling – see Coco Gauff and Elena Rybakina, who each had been bounced out of Cincinnati on Thursday – Pegula is in good place to make a push on the US Open.
Absolutely she’d like to interrupt by and attain a semifinal at a significant for the primary time. She has misplaced every of her six earlier Grand Slam quarterfinals, however perhaps these contemporary legs could possibly be the distinction for her in Flushing Meadows in a couple of weeks.
In Canada Pegula turned the primary girl to repeat as champion since Martina Hingis in 2000, defeating Amanda Anisimova within the remaining.
🏆 BACK-TO-BACK 🏆@JPegula defends her title on the #NBO24, turning into the primary girl within the twenty first century to win two straight titles in Canada 🤠@nationalbank pic.twitter.com/SDXIc2A44J
— Nationwide Financial institution Open (@NBOtoronto) August 12, 2024
Pegula will face artful Czech Karolina Muchova in second-round motion on Friday in a match that was cancelled resulting from rain on Thursday evening in Cincinnati.
Pegula didn’t have one of the best time on the Olympics a couple of weeks in the past, dropping within the second spherical in singles and doubles, however she’s shortly adjusted again to her favourite floor and hopes to complete the season robust.
She mentioned it was good for her to go straight from Paris to Toronto and fling herself into the laborious court docket season with a lot time to dwell on the difficulties of switching surfaces.
“To have the ability to come again the following week and simply give attention to competing in a approach nearly helped me,” she mentioned, in line with Tennis.com. “I didn’t have time to consider how I used to be actually feeling… It was type of like, ‘Okay, let’s type of see the place we’re. Let’s attempt to get the motion again, the sensation again on laborious court docket with the balls,’ and stuff like that. I nearly surprise in a approach if it type of helped.”