{"id":565401,"date":"2026-03-26T10:23:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T10:23:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/565401\/"},"modified":"2026-03-26T10:23:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T10:23:12","slug":"the-tennis-star-who-is-a-prism-for-the-wta-tours-emerging-duopoly-and-how-to-break-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/565401\/","title":{"rendered":"The tennis star who is a prism for the WTA Tour\u2019s emerging duopoly \u2014 and how to break it"},"content":{"rendered":"

MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. \u2014 Jessica Pegula<\/a> has a problem \u2014 the same problem as the rest of women\u2019s tennis<\/a> right now.<\/p>\n

Pegula, the 32-year-old American who is having the latest and greatest blossoming of an already late-blooming career, keeps making it to the end of the biggest tournaments and running into the barricade that Elena Rybakina<\/a>, the world No. 2, and Aryna Sabalenka<\/a>, the world No. 1, have set up at the top of the sport,<\/p>\n

She ran into it again Wednesday at the Miami Open<\/a>. Pegula played a whale of a match against Rybakina, the reigning Australian Open champion<\/a>. She won 100 points. Rybakina won 98.<\/p>\n

Pegula lost.<\/p>\n

Every time she had a chance, either to surge ahead in the second set or to reel her opponent in during the third, Rybakina slammed the door shut \u2014 just like she did on two more really big stages: the semifinals of January\u2019s Australian Open and November\u2019s WTA Tour Finals. at the Australian Open in January and the semis of the WTA Tour Finals in November.<\/p>\n

Sabalenka beat her in the semifinals of the U.S. Open, and at the Tour Finals as well, though Pegula snuck out a win between those two in at the Wuhan Open in China.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t be upset that I\u2019m losing to like the two best players in the world,\u201d Pegula said after the 2-6, 6-3, 6-4 loss before heading out for a doubles match. \u201cPeople may rag on, \u2018Oh, what do you have to do to beat them,\u2019 or, you know, \u2018Why haven\u2019t you beaten them?\u2019 But at the same time \u2026 I don\u2019t know.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Not many people beat them these days. Rybakina is now 21-4 this season. Sabalenka is 20-1 after beating Hailey Baptiste, the aggressive and rising American with a sweet game laced with variety, 6-4, 6-4.<\/p>\n

Baptiste matched Sabalenka until crunch time arrived, along with the errors and the double faults, and that was that. Sabalenka did what she has done all year except in the Australian Open final against, of course, Rybakina, who beat Baptiste in three sets earlier this month at the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe didn\u2019t give me much at all in her service games, and when she got the opportunities in my service games, she took them and she went after them,\u201d Baptiste said of Sabalenka. \u201cThat\u2019s why she\u2019s where she is.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Thursday, Sabalenka and Rybakina will do something that might not happen for a while: They will play a semifinal. The Miami Open held its women\u2019s singles draw March 15, the day of the Indian Wells final and one day before Rybakina officially took the world No. 2 ranking from Iga \u015awi\u0105tek, the dominant player of the past four years.<\/p>\n

Rybakina\u2019s name emerged on Sabalenka\u2019s side of the draw, giving Coco Gauff and Karol\u00edna Muchov\u00e1 what could be their last chance for a while to get to the final of a big tournament without facing either of them, and to win it by only beating one.<\/p>\n

Rybakina and Sabalenka aren\u2019t Sinner and Alcaraz yet, and \u015awi\u0105tek and Gauff will likely ensure that they never get that far, but they have not been far off the past six months.<\/p>\n

They split the past two Grand Slams and the two other most important tournaments, the WTA Tour Finals and Indian Wells, where they faced each other in the final on both occasions.<\/p>\n

Pegula has thoughts on why this dynamic has emerged.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn big pressure points, the amount of times they go for big second serves or they go for big returns or, they hit a big 1-2 punch, serve first ball, or rip a winner on a break point,\u201d she said of Sabalenka and Rybakina. \u201cIt takes a lot of confidence to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Rybakina, that confidence works like a snowball rolling down a hill. She\u2019s played a lot of close matches in the past six months, with a lot of big moments.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy coaches always tell me about these moments, when I need to push myself more, when I need to put this extra energy on the serve, stay more intense in these rallies,\u201d she said in a news conference. \u201cAnd I think\u00a0 that for now, when I listen and when I\u2019m able to show it, of course it works.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sabalenka said that for her, the key to her supremacy has been doing something like the opposite of that. For her, success has come from not thinking about her matches in terms of big moments. Each moment is just as big or small as every other one.<\/p>\n

\u201cFocus on the game plan, not take it like too, too far, like too emotional,\u201d she said. \u201cThat\u2019s why I\u2019m able to pull out really great tennis on the key moments, just because I don\u2019t think about those moments as the key moments.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Pegula and the rest of the field it all adds up to a pile of frustration, especially on a day like Wednesday, when the score sheet said she played just as well or maybe even better than Rybakina on the whole. Rybakina\u2019s 15 aces went a long way toward putting her away.<\/p>\n

All she and the rest of the tour can do is keep swinging, and keep trying to match the standard.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve elevated my game,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019ve gotten better. I\u2019ve become a better player. I think that I am definitely challenging them, both of them, and that\u2019s kind of all I can kind of ask of myself, and then hopefully, you know, some of the wins will come along.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. \u2014 Jessica Pegula has a problem \u2014 the same problem as the rest of women\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":565402,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":["post-565401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=565401"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565401\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/565402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=565401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=565401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=565401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}