Tag: Jessica Pegula

Every year when the US Open rolls around in August, the discourse begins again in earnest: how long must we wait for an American man to win another Grand Slam? It’s been 22 years now, dating all the way back to Andy Roddick’s triumph at this very tournament in 2003, and still, no one looks particularly close to pulling it off. The almost-insurmountable problem is that doing so would likely require unseating Jannik Sinner and/or Carlos Alcaraz in a best-of-five encounter. And while American men’s tennis is better positioned than it has been in a while, boasting a talented crop of contenders that includes Ben Shelton and last year’s US Open finalist, Taylor Fritz, getting through the duopoly at the top of tennis is a herculean feat for anyone on tour.

The men’s title drought, and the sense of desperation it inspires in the American tennis commentariat, is all the more reason to celebrate something that can too easily be taken for granted: American women’s tennis, only a few years removed from Serena Williams’s retirement, is experiencing yet another boom period.

With her three-set, three-hour win over Naomi Osaka in the semifinals on Thursday night, New Jersey native Amanda Anisimova booked a spot in her second consecutive Major final. It was a gutsy comeback from the 6-0, 6-0 shellacking she took at the hands of Iga Swiatek at Wimbledon in July, the kind of defeat that might have kept a lesser player down for months. But the 24-year-old Anisimova, whose punishing ball-striking follows in the power tennis tradition of Lindsay Davenport and the Williams sisters before her, has proven she’s here to stay, making steady improvements to an already polished game since taking a mental health break from the tour in 2023. When she takes on world number one Aryna Sabalenka in the final on Saturday, she’ll be attempting to become the third different American woman to win a major in 2025 alone. At the French Open, world number three Coco Gauff beat Sabalenka to win her second slam; four months earlier in Melbourne, 30-year-old Madison Keys recorded storybook, back-to-back wins over Swiatek and Sabalenka to win her very first.

Joining them in the sport’s upper echelon is the late-blooming 31-year-old Jessica Pegula, an unflappable baseliner whose flat strokes and precise timing call to mind yet another giant of American women’s tennis, Jennifer Capriati. Where Gauff and Keys secured financial support and scholarships from a number of American tennis associations as young prodigies, Pegula, the daughter of oil magnate and Buffalo Bills owner Terry Pegula, was a less heralded junior player who didn’t break into the WTA’s top ten until she was 28. Since then, she’s been a mainstay in the sport’s upper ranks — and were it not for Sabalenka’s comeback victory against her in Thursday’s first semifinal, one of the finest matches of this year’s Open, Pegula might well be joining Anisimova in an all-American final.

And there is more depth, still, from world number 11 Emma Navarro to two-time Grand Slam doubles champion Taylor Townsend, who earned herself legions of new fans last week after gracefully enduring a heated and racially charged confrontation with her second-round opponent, Jelena Ostapenko. That many of Towsend’s countrywomen rallied behind her was a testament not only to the potent sense of solidarity among the group but to the 29-year-old’s quietly successful tenure on the women’s tour, during which she’s emerged as one of the world’s best doubles players.

But what might be more impressive than the sheer depth of American women’s tennis today is the variety of playing styles among them. If Anisimova and Keys bludgeon the ball, routinely hitting groundstrokes at speeds comparable to the best men’s players in the world, Gauff wins with unrelenting defense and mettle. Townsend, meanwhile, employs the kind of old-fashioned serve-and-volley tactics that have mostly disappeared from the modern game.

Perhaps we’ve become inured to all the winning. But the fact of the matter is that, for at least the last 50 years, no country has been better at developing women’s tennis superstars than the United States. In fact, since the last time an American man claimed a Major singles title, American women have won 25 (yes, no small chunk of those belong to Serena).

“All of us look different,” Gauff said last month at the Masters tournament in Cincinnati while reflecting on the abundance of American talent in tennis today. “We have biracial, black, white [players], all types of representation for girls and guys to look up to in the top 10.” When asked whether or not the women feel a friendly sense of rivalry with their male compatriots, she couldn’t help but get in a playful jab. “It hasn’t been much of a competition, no offense to them,” Gauff quipped. “They have to catch up.”