‘Late Bloomer’ Pegula Embracing Miami-to-Charleston Pivot
TOP SEED: ‘IF YOU’RE WINNING, IT CREATES A GOOD PROBLEM’
Tracy Austin was just 16 when, in pigtails and Ted Tinling dress, she captured her first major singles title in 1979, the youngest-ever US Open champion. Madison Keys was 14 when she beat Serena Williams in a World TeamTennis match in 2009, a Sports Illustrated-endorsed sure-thing phenom. Coco Gauff was only 15 when she became the youngest player ever to reach the main draw at Wimbledon in 2019. (She would go on to stun idol Venus Williams and reach the Round of 16.)
Jessica Pegula, 31, can’t relate.
“I think I’ve had a different story, a different journey. I was a late bloomer,” said Pegula ahead of the 2025 Credit One Charleston Open, where she’s the top seed.
The fourth-ranked American wasn’t necessarily a highly-touted junior. Her first WTA title didn’t come until she was 25. She reached her first Grand Slam final (the 2024 US Open) at 30. But with her late breakthrough comes some benefits, too.
“I don’t feel like I had that part of my life, so maybe I don’t feel as old as my age,” she said. “I feel like I’m younger. I didn’t have a ton of wear and tear as far as playing a ton of tournaments, with the travel and the weeks, when I was 18, 19, 20. I think maybe that’s kept my mind a little bit fresher for a 31-year-old.”
“I feel like I’ve been on tour forever, but these girls are looking like they’re going to be on the tour for 15, 20 years. That’s crazy. I can’t wrap my head around it. I feel like if I had that journey, I would have burned out so quickly.”
Pegula has become one of the tour’s most consistent performers since cracking the Top 10 in the PIF WTA Rankings in 2022. Last year, she turned a lackluster start into a year to remember, beginning with a WTA 1000 title defense in Toronto. She would follow up with back-to-back finals at the Cincinnati Open and US Open, edged by nemesis Aryna Sabalenka on both occasions. All along, her confidence was building, unafraid to go corner to corner with the sport’s most powerful performers.
It was a draining stretch, with little to no time to recover between tournaments. But Pegula is growing accustomed to such quandaries. She arrived in Charleston this week on the heels of reaching the Miami Open final, where she again fell to Sabalenka.
“Honestly, I don’t mind it,” she said. “It’s one of those things where it’s a good problem to have. If you’re winning, it creates a good problem. But I always love coming here. I love playing here. I don’t really mind the transition that much, to the green clay. It’s pretty easy for me. I grew up playing on green clay when I was a kid. As long as I’m feeling good mentally and physically, and I’m ready to compete, then I want to come and play.”
“I think I always play well when I have a lot of matches under my belt. I played a lot last summer and was able to do it. I like getting in that phase where you feel really match-tough. I usually seem to handle it well.”
A semifinalist in Charleston the past two years, Pegula hopes to kick off her clay-court campaign on a high note, but will have to navigate a challenging quarter of the draw that includes defending champion Danielle Collins, 11th seed Jelena Ostapenko and 2024 semifinalist Maria Sakkari. Who knows? Maybe she’ll get on a roll the way she did last year, and even work her way back into a Grand Slam final. But whether or not she wins one (or more) of tennis’ four most prized trophies won’t define her career.
“Sometimes you get stressed out because maybe it doesn’t work out the way that media, fans, want it to work out,” she said. “But I think I proved a lot of people wrong in the aspect of me doing so well and being so consistent the last couple of years. Just because I haven’t won a Slam doesn’t mean I’m not having a successful career.”
