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| By Charlie Eccleshare |
Jessica Pegula goes for her first Grand Slam title against World No. 2 Aryna Sabalenka
Kim Clijsters is talking about how she felt ahead of her first Grand Slam final at the French Open 23 years ago as she prepared to face Jennifer Capriati. Capriati had won the Australian Open that year in what was also her first Grand Slam final.
On Saturday evening, Jessica Pegula will be fighting back similar feelings as she prepares to compete in her first final — at the U.S. Open, in her home Grand Slam, against Aryna Sabalenka, who has played three major finals already, winning two of them.
Clijsters had only just turned 18 and puts much of the fear she felt down to callowness. Pegula, in tennis terms, is at the opposite end of the spectrum — at 30, she is the oldest first-time Grand Slam finalist since 33-year-old Flavia Pennetta, who beat compatriot Roberta Vinci to win the title in New York in 2015.
That may help Pegula, it may hinder her — either way, nothing can fully prepare a player for what it’s like for a first major final.
“There are added nerves, added emotions that you’ve never experienced,” Clijsters said in an interview at Wimbledon. “It’s the reason I lost my first four Slam finals.
I couldn’t handle the pressure of seeing the trophy and thinking this is something I’ve wanted my whole life.”
Clijsters fell to Capriati, as she details, giving the American her second title of 2001.
There is perhaps no better player for Pegula to learn from in this regard. Clijsters retired from tennis in 2007, aged 23, burnt out by competition and having suffered several injuries. When she returned to the sport, the scene of her greatest comeback triumph was the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center as she entered the 2009 U.S. Open as an unranked player and won the whole thing.
Thursday night, Pegula was relaxed about how she would prepare for the biggest match of her life after beating Karolina Muchova in a three-set semifinal that turned on a missed volley from Muchova, who would have gone 6-1, 3-0 up if she had made it. Pegula, world No. 6, was circumspect about whether or not she would tap up players who have been in this position to ask for their advice.
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| Kim Clijsters |
“We’ll see who texts me tonight and tomorrow. Maybe if there is a good name that pops up, I can pick their brain a little bit.
“I might just kind of wing it.”
Although her opponent, Sabalenka, has been here before, she was nervous when losing the first set to Elena Rybakina in last year’s Australian Open final. Eventually, the Belarusian and current world No. 2 settled into the match before coming back to win in three sets. By contrast, Sabalenka looked in control of her first U.S. Open final, when she won the first set 6-2 against Coco Gauff. Instead, she unravelled in the face of Gauff’s resilience and a 24,000-strong home crowd, surrendering a title that she had in her grasp in another three-set final.
There are more nuanced symmetries between the two finalists as well. It took Sabalenka four attempts to win a Grand Slam semifinal, while on Wednesday Pegula won her first major quarterfinal after having lost her first six.
After that kind of breakthrough win, a player often goes one of two ways. They are liberated and able to play free in the next match or a bit less focused after the emotional comedown of finally achieving a goal.
Pegula tracked with the latter for the first set of her semifinal against Muchova, 24 hours after her landmark win against world No. 1 Iga Swiatek.
In her on-court interview, Pegula said Muchova “made me look like a beginner, I was about to burst into tears.”
Later on, she suggested she’d actually been too relaxed before playing Muchova, meaning she was missing some of the nervous tension she’d experienced ahead of facing Swiatek.
“It was weird,” Pegula said. “I feel like before the match with Iga, I was way more nervous and today I was just, like, ‘Whatever’.
“Maybe that was bad because I came out super flat. Clearly, I was a little too loose.”
It’s a fine balance to strike. Sabalenka has often gone too far the other way — in last year’s final against Gauff, she was clearly stressed out by the patriotic crowd. She looked similarly wound up towards the end of the second set in Thursday’s semifinal against Emma Navarro when she was broken before serving for the match.
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