World No. 4 Jessica Pegula has revealed that her former coaches and even her parents weren’t happy with her attitude on the court growing up.
The American is known for her calm demeanour and rarely gets super fired up during matches. While she’s commended for her cool and collected approach now, Pegula was previously told she had a “bad attitude”.
Appearing on the Tennis Insider Club podcast, she said: “When I was growing up, everyone always – and I say everyone is in, my parents or my coaches at the time – like never really liked my attitude. I always kind of had a bad attitude.
“And so not a bad attitude, but they’d say, you know, you look like you don’t care. Passive kind of thing. And I’d be like, so then I kind of got this complex, like they were trying to get me to be fired up and I’d be like, that’s okay, but like, I can’t do that, so do I do it?
“So then I get mad. I think then I just started kind of being more emotional and maybe a little bit more like bad attitude.”