The courtyard of the Four Seasons Washington DC is hot in the late July half-light. It’s the day before the kickoff of the city’s Mubadala Citi Open, which signals the beginning of North America’s hard-court-tennis-season swing that culminates with the US Open starting on Monday. Everyone is trying to enjoy the summery twilight, but it’s a little uncomfortable—amid the intense humidity, mosquitos are on the ambush. Yet 29-year-old Jessica Pegula, the current world number-three women’s tennis player and the highest ranked American on the WTA Tour, exudes only bonhomie as she reclines into a chair.
“By the time I start this tournament, I’ll have been here a week,” she says, laughing. “One of my best friends lives here, so it has been nice to see her, and my husband has been bringing our dogs over there. The dogs are behaved, but they’re not Four Seasons behaved.”
Pegula is known for her chill affability. (Recall, in another example, her tennis world-viral moment of drinking a Heineken during a postmatch press conference at last year’s Open.) Equal to it, though, is an assured match-play intensity. It’s evinced by her powerful flattened ground strokes, expansive baseline coverage, adroit angle-finding capability, and the maturity that comes with being 29 in a sport where stars are often forged at ages a decade younger. She has used her quiet grit to make the quarterfinals in 10 of her past 13 events, continuing through to the semis in many of them. She has an element of nonchalance but is in tandem extremely dialed in. It’s an uncommon alchemy.
All this was very much on display a few weeks ago at the women’s Canadian Open (officially, the National Bank Open) in Montreal, where she was up against the number-one ranked Iga Świątek in the semifinal. Pegula had taken the first set. The second set had reached a tense tiebreak when somehow someone in the producers’ booth cued the 1990’s earworm “Cotton Eye Joe” mid point, the song’s ridiculous twang echoing out as Pegula hit a defensive lob. The chair umpire, Marija Cicak, interjected, calling for a let. Clips show Pegula mouthing “Are you kidding me?!” to her coach, David Witt, but then smiling it off. She lost that set. Some might argue the disruption was the reason. But she ended up winning the third—and then the whole tournament.
“I didn’t really think about the ‘Cotton Eye Joe’ glitch until after, when I saw that I lost a lot of points consecutively from that moment,” says Pegula a few days later from Cincinnati, where she was playing in the Western & Southern Open. To beat Świątek, though, Pegula needed to brush it off and hammer ahead. “I think I was playing smartly,” she says, “and aggressively.” In the end, the victory was all about keeping even-keeled. “I just didn’t get too frustrated.”
The Canadian Open is Pegula’s second 1000-level competition victory; her first came late last year at Mexico’s Guadalajara Open. She’s produced notable depth in Slams, having reached the quarterfinals three times at the Australian Open and once each at Roland-Garros, Wimbledon, and the US Open.
Her third career title thus far came back in 2019, at the DC tournament. “That was the first week I had David [Witt] as my coach,” she said last month. “And my mini Australian shepherd, Maddie, was also there.” There’s some telling linearity in that statement: Witt, who was Venus Williams’s longtime coach, has helped push Pegula into formidable territory on court, while her love of animals, particularly dogs, provides an anchor away from the lights.
Pegula has a deep affinity for canines: In addition to Maddie, there’s Tucker, a chocolate Lab—she sadly lost her third, a German shepherd named Dexter, in late July and dedicated her Canadian Open win to him on Instagram. Along with her husband, Taylor Gahagen, Pegula co-runs A Lending Paw, a charity that supports rescuing dogs, as well as nurturing (and financing) them to become service animals and connecting them with people in need.
“We wanted to help people afford service dogs,” Pegula says. “Not only is that about dogs helping people, it’s about people helping dogs, because we only work with rescues. It goes both ways.” Ahead of the US Open, Pegula is hosting an event at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center where A Lending Paw will link a newly trained dog with a veteran.
Buffalo-born Pegula comes from a gilded background. Her parents, Terry and Kim, are billionaires who made their fortune in the energy space. They own the NFL’s Buffalo Bills and the NHL’s Buffalo Sabres. Pegula has, in accord, been dubbed the world’s richest tennis player, but she’s understated enough that you wouldn’t guess it if you didn’t know it. All the same, that tax bracket can make things complicated. “I know what haters say: ‘The only reason she’s good is because she has money.’ But for the most part, I think people have found that it’s an interesting story. It’s made me think, Okay—I’m not going to hide from this.”
She adds: “It’s also fun to see this kind of crossover with Bills fans—even if I am far away, like in Qatar, I see people in the stands wearing Bills jerseys.” In January of this year, the Bills player Damar Hamlin went into cardiac arrest after a tackle, prompting global headlines. A few weeks later, at the Australian Open, Pegula wore Hamlin’s number, 3, as a patch on her skirt to show support. The gesture underscored Pegula’s unique position of being able to bridge an intrinsically American athletic bastion with a different, smaller—though global—sport.
This year’s US Open will also mark the relaunch of Pegula’s skin care line, Ready 24. “I like to say it’s adaptable skin care,” she says. “It’s for people on the go, not just athletes, and people that might want to mix their regimen with other products. It’s very basic: Growing up, I had horrible skin, and usually when I did less, my skin got better.” Ready 24 will return to the market with a cleanser, a moisturizer, a mist, and a moisturizing stick, though Pegula says the holy grail is finding a formula for an effective sunblock, which is far trickier than it sounds. (It’s also a top concern for tennis players in particular: You don’t want anything with tint because it gets on your clothes, anything too oily will run into your eyes, and anything too heavy will make you look “like a ghost,” Pegula says.) She anticipates launching her sunscreen in 2024.
This all amounts to a singular American tennis story, as homegrown tennis skill has been on the rise on both the women’s and men’s tours in recent years. Pegula leads the pack of Stateside female talent: Coco Gauff, with whom Pegula plays doubles and who went on to win this year’s DC tournament as well as the Western & Southern, is currently ranked sixth. Madison Keys, Danielle Collins, Sloane Stephens, Alycia Parks, and Lauren Davis are all in the top 50. How does Pegula feel about the mantle?
“I embrace it,” she says. “I’ve kind of peaked at an older age, though I’ve always been kind of low-key—I don’t do as much on social media; I don’t think of myself as particularly popular. The pressure of it is not something I think about. But I might as well do as much now and appreciate everything that comes my way because I’m not 20. It’s not like I have 10 more years to go.”
Though her Montreal feat should serve as a propellant going into the US Open, some have questioned whether Pegula can be a consistent closer—she’s gone so far in so many tournaments but hasn’t regularly converted key wins on the biggest stages. She’s not worried.
“Sometimes I say to myself, Okay, do I need something more? What can I do? But then I think: I’ve beaten a lot of these girls at least once. I’m right there. I’m right where I need to be, so it’s really just about finding a bit more belief in those moments. I don’t want to be that person overthinking and changing things. It’s not how I am. I’ve seen players try and change their game to get there, and it takes them out of what they’re actually really good at. They kind of lose confidence when that happens. I don’t think I’ll ever be like that.”