Jessica Pegula said a night out at an escape room helped solve the riddle of her poor form as she plotted a path to the quarter-finals of the US Open on Sunday.<\/p>\n
The American fourth seed – a beaten finalist at the US Open last year – advanced to the last eight after breezing past compatriot Ann Li<\/a> 6-1, 6-2<\/a> on the Arthur Ashe Stadium court.<\/p>\n Pegula<\/a> arrived in New York on the back of a dispiriting sequence of results that left her anticipating a short stay at Flushing Meadows following early round exits at WTA events in Washington, Montreal and Cincinnati.<\/p>\n The 31-year-old’s confidence took another dip days before the tournament, when her form was so dismal she cut short a practice session with world number one Aryna Sabalenka<\/a>.<\/p>\n But a night out with friends at an escape room – and a “few drinks” – helped her bring a relaxed approach into the tournament.<\/p>\n “I felt terrible coming into this tournament, honestly,” Pegula said after Sunday’s 54-minute victory. “I had a practice Wednesday, I hit with Sabalenka. She killed me. I was playing terrible.<\/p>\n “Then we went out for a second hour, and I stopped like halfway through the hour and was, like, ‘I’m done, this isn’t good’ … So I kind of walked off the court, like, not very happy.”<\/p>\n A night out improved her mood though.<\/p>\n “Went and did an escape room with my friends and had, like, two drinks and was, like, I need to just chill and stop getting so frustrated and overthinking all these practices,” she said.<\/p>\n On Sunday, Pegula looked more like the player that ousted Iga Swiatek<\/a> in last year’s US Open quarter-finals before just falling short against Sabalenka in the final as she demolished the out-matched Li.<\/p>\n “I played her at Roland Garros this year and we had a tough two sets,” Pegula said.<\/p>\n “When she’s serving well she’s really dangerous. But I felt she came out slow and nervous and I wanted to jump on top of that. That was my motivation the entire match.”<\/p>\n Pegula exploited Li’s problems on serve to coast to a win that sets up a quarter-final meeting against either\u00a0Barbora Krejcikova<\/a> or Taylor Townsend<\/a>, who play later Sunday.<\/p>\n Li, ranked 58th in the world, was on the defensive from the first game, being broken immediately to hand Pegula an early advantage.<\/p>\n Pegula went on to break Li three more times to wrap up the first set in just 25 minutes.<\/p>\n Li was soon in trouble in the second set, being broken in the fourth game to go 3-1 down as Pegula closed in on victory.<\/p>\n Pegula clinched her quarter-final spot in the eighth game blasting a backhand service return down the line to break Li to love.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jessica Pegula said a night out at an escape room helped solve the riddle of her poor form…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":124941,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":{"0":"post-124940","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=124940"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124940\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/124941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}