Interview: [1] Jessica Pegula – QF (def. [12] Paula Badosa 6-3 7-6(6))

Friday, April 7, 2023

Quarterfinal – [1] Jessica Pegula def. [12] Paula Badosa 6-3 7-6(6)

Question: Tough match against Paula. You must be so happy today.

JESSICA PEGULA: No, yeah. That was awesome. She made me earn it in the end. The conditions started getting really tricky. I know there’s some rain coming, so I’m glad I was able to get through that, especially in straight sets.

Question: You talked about the conditions. There seemed some change mid-match, particularly the wind. How hard is it to play in that?

JESSICA PEGULA: Yeah. Literally, I think it was a set, and I was serving at 1-0 in the second set, and all of a sudden the wind just shifted going this way, and it got dropped like ten degrees and it was crazy. You could just feel it kind of in the air. So I kind of looked at my coach, like, okay, I need to hold, because you never know what’s going to happen in the conditions, and I was playing really well and it got tricky there.

Question: Before this week you hadn’t been past the third round and now you’re into the semifinals, playing Belinda Bencic, defending champion. Without a win for you yet, but do you feel you’re a different player against her now from when you played her before?

JESSICA PEGULA: Yeah. Belinda is really tough. She’s a really tough matchup for me. I haven’t played her in a while. I think I’ve improved a lot since the last time I played her. But we play kind of similar, hit kind of low flat, take it early. And she tends to kind of feed off my pace and like how I play. So it’s always matchup for me, but I think maybe the first time on clay, so it’ll be interesting to see that, but she’s obviously very confident right now, defending champ, and it’s going to be really tough.

Question: Should be a good one. Wish you well in it.