NEW YORK — Jessica Pegula rarely feels the need to obscure her opinions. When she was asked Wednesday about playing Karolina Muchova in the U.S. Open semifinals, she answered truthfully and spoke to the elegant, merciless tennis Muchova has been playing since her return from injury earlier this summer.
By Ava Wallace
That straightforward honesty she has with herself — few athletes would be so colorfully complimentary of an opponent before playing them — is part of what has made Pegula so dangerous at this U.S. Open. The 30-year-old has been through enough in her career, and is rational enough by nature, to have seen Thursday’s match for exactly what it was: an incredible challenge, a stupendous opportunity, and also, just another match.
Pegula paired that logic with the smartest, gutsiest tennis she has ever played Thursday in Arthur Ashe Stadium and turned it into the biggest triumph of her career, a 1-6, 6-4, 6-2 win over Muchova to advance to her first Grand Slam final.
“I was able to adapt just in the nick of time tonight," she said, smiling.
Pegula won in front of her siblings, her husband and father, who together with her mother own the NFL’s Buffalo Bills and the NHL’s Buffalo Sabres, to become just the third woman to make a U.S. Open final after turning 30.
The rest of that list? Martina Navratilova and Serena Williams.
Heady company, but Pegula is also realistic enough to know she has a mighty challenge ahead. She will face two-time Grand Slam champion Aryna Sabalenka in Saturday’s final after the Belarusian overpowered American Emma Navarro, 6-3, 7-6 (7-2), to advance to her second straight U.S. Open final.
Sabalenka, the second seed in New York, owns a 5-2 record against Pegula and is hungry to avenge the wrenching, three-set losses that have plagued her in New York. She lost the championship match last year to Coco Gauff and fell in the semifinals in 2022 and 2021. She played Thursday with ruthless determination and was deterred only momentarily in the second set by the same issue that has frequently given her trouble on big stages: her emotions.
“Every time I’m coming back here, I have this positive thinking, like, ‘Come, on, maybe this time,’” Sabalenka said. “Every time I’m hoping that one day, I’ll be able to hold that beautiful trophy.”
Sabalenka is an imposing 5-foot-11 and unleashed her full power on Navarro, who before this year had never made it past the first round of the U.S. Open and will make her top 10 debut amid a breakthrough season. The 23-year-old American saw only a sliver of opportunity late in the second set when she readied to serve trailing 3-5 and the crowd finally came alive, providing what amounted to a home-court advantage and helping spur Navarro to force a tiebreaker.
Sabalenka tightened. The Belarusian likes to be liked by fans and even offered — jokingly, maybe — to buy everyone on Arthur Ashe Stadium drinks after her quarterfinal win if they promised to cheer a little for her in the semifinals.
By the time they got to a tiebreaker, Sabalenka had taken several deep breaths and re-centered herself.
“I was, like, No, no, no, Aryna, it's not going to happen again,” she said. “You have to control your emotions. You have to focus on yourself.”
Sabalenka rolled her eyes after double faulting to start the tiebreaker down 0-2, then rolled her shoulders, reloaded and won the next seven points to take the match.
On Saturday, the defending Australian Open champion will try to become the first woman to win both hard-court Grand Slam titles in a single year since Angelique Kerber in 2016.
Pegula will try to continue a run of the strongest tennis of her career. The Buffalo native has been a top-five player for the past two years and playing her can be like playing against a brick wall — she always returns the shot, sending a flat, low ball flying at her opponent with metronomic consistency.
It’s Pegula’s improved movement, thanks in part to a new coaching team, that’s helping her in this tournament. The American said she’s getting out of corners faster on court, which is helping her not fall behind in points. That also leads to better court positioning, which helps her hit more of the shots she wants, which fuels her confidence.
She needed that in spades after losing the first set 6-1 and falling behind 2-0 in the second against Muchova, a dangerously creative Czech player who made the French Open final and the semifinals here last year before a wrist injury kept her off the court for nearly 10 months.
Muchova was a point away from a 3-0 lead in the second set when she missed a volley off a Pegula slice and the American saw her chance — she started varying her serves and putting more depth on her groundstrokes to take time away from Muchova. A packed crowd finally woke up and helped give Pegula an extra push.
“I think just that game, really holding that game I was able to just find some adrenaline and get my legs under me,” Pegula said. “You know, just try and chase down every single ball that I could.”
She chased down enough to win nine of the next 11 games, good enough for a 3-0 start in the third set and, eventually, a berth in her first Grand Slam final after a long career spent waiting.
As for her approach for Saturday’s championship match, Pegula hopes Sabalenka serves just a bit less efficiently than she did Thursday, plans to have a light practice Friday and maybe — maybe — will pick a Grand Slam champion’s mind, if one of her friends with a title happens to send her a text.
But Pegula also feels good about just winging it, she said Thursday, laughing. She trusts the work she has put in.
“Honestly, I’ve always felt like, not that it was never going to happen, I almost think the opposite," Pegula said of her long wait to make a Grand Slam final. “I always felt like, you know what, you’ll figure it out eventually.”
