Pegula had fallen in straight sets to Sabalenka<\/a> in the semifinal on Thursday at the U.S. Open, there was a natural curiosity about what the Upstate New York native was drinking.\u00a0<\/p>\n![\"Jessica](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/jessica-pegula-us-waves-fans-140541209.jpg\")
Jessica Pegula of the US waves to fans after being defeated by Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus during their semifinals match in Arthur Ashe Stadium during the US Open Tennis Championship at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Queens, New York, on Thursday, Sept. 10, 2026. JASON SZENES FOR NEW YORK POST<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m always at a U.S. Open press conference trying to pee for doping, but it\u2019s just espresso, decaf espresso,\u201d she said with a small smile while holding up the cup.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot tequila?\u201d the reporter followed up with.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, I wish,\u201d Pegula joked. \u201cNobody offered to bring any. It\u2019s coffee this year. Yeah, it\u2019s just another night. Another loss and another trying to go to the bathroom.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Pegula, the No. 3 seed in this year\u2019s tournament in Flushing Meadows, remained in relatively good spirits after Sabalenka dispatched her 7-5, 6-2 under the lights at Arthur Ashe Stadium.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The American hung in there for part of the first set, with things even 4-4 roughly 25 minutes into the match, before Sabalenka turned it up a notch and closed out the set.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sabalenka seemed to hit cruise control during the second set.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m honestly not that upset, to be honest, because I don\u2019t really think there was much I could have done today,\u201d Pegula said after the match. \u201cThat was pretty much our attitude after the match, because like I said, she played an insanely high level, I think probably one of her better matches this year, for sure.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was it. It didn\u2019t feel like there was a lot \u2014 I, of course, tried to stick around to see if the level would go off, but it seemed like it just got better as the match went on.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jessica Pegula\u2019s post-match press conference beverage choice has become as much of a topic as her play on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":767101,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[7307,8833,101,118,56,54,55,7259],"class_list":["post-767100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-aryna-sabalenka","tag-jessica-pegula","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-us-open-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/767100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=767100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/767100\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/767101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=767100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=767100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=767100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}