NEW YORK, Sept 4 (Reuters) – \u2060Jessica Pegula kept alive her bid for a maiden Grand Slam title when the \u2060third-seeded American rallied from behind to beat fellow former U.S. Open finalist Leylah \u200cFernandez 1-6 6-4 6-3 and make the fourth round at Flushing Meadows on Friday.<\/p>\n
Pegula faces Sorana Cirstea in the last 16 and will need to iron out some of the flaws in her game after a sluggish start against Fernandez, \u200bbut the American showed the resilience and composure that have \u2060made her one of the title \u2060contenders.<\/p>\n
Back at Arthur Ashe Stadium, where her dream run ended against Emma Raducanu in the 2021 \u2060title \u200cclash, the 23-year-old Fernandez seized the initiative and rarely allowed Pegula to find any rhythm early in the contest.<\/p>\n
“It was really tough today. I always feel it’s hard to \u2060play her. I never feel comfortable when I play her, \u200beven when I have won,” \u200cPegula said.<\/p>\n
“I was going to have to dig deep. I’m glad I was able \u2060to find somewhere there \u200bin the second set to turn it around. She’s a great player, so it was really hard. A lot of it revolves around my serve. My serve percentage was pretty bad.”<\/p>\n
The Canadian dominated play with \u2060her left-handed aggression as she pushed 2024 runner-up Pegula \u200bback with deep groundstrokes while mixing up the pace and angles to take the opening set in 30 minutes.<\/p>\n
Pegula responded strongly by breaking in the sixth game of the second set and then dug \u2060out a crucial hold in the following one before Fernandez mounted a fightback, but the American recovered to force a decider.<\/p>\n
“I do think she played a bit differently today to when I’ve played her in the past,” Pegula added.<\/p>\n
“I wasn’t moving my feet up to the ball, and was \u200ba little lazy to start off. Even in the second set, \u2060I felt I was hitting a bit of a wall after we played those two games.”<\/p>\n
The \u200b32-year-old saved breakpoints early in the third set and pounced \u200cfor a 3-1 lead when Fernandez sent her shot \u200bwide, before easing through the following games and sealing victory with a backhand volley winner on match point.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Shrivathsa Sridhar in New York; editing by Clare Fallon)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK, Sept 4 (Reuters) – \u2060Jessica Pegula kept alive her bid for a maiden Grand Slam title…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":880009,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,6675,85,747],"class_list":["post-880008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-na","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/880008","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=880008"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/880008\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/880009"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=880008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=880008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=880008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}