DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Jessica Pegula entered Dubai having not played in approximately 20 days.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The World No. 5 — who came off a stellar semifinal run at the Australian Open — elected to not partake in the first two tournaments in the Middle East swing on the WTA Tour Driven by Mercedes-Benz, rather heading back home to the United States to recover.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Dubai:\u00a0Scores\u00a0<\/a>| \u00a0Draws<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Order of play<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n As the No. 4 seed, Pegula had a bye into the second round, where she certainly looked rejuvenated and dominant in Tuesday’s routine 6-4, 6-0 win over qualifier Varvara Gracheva. Pegula needed just 70 minutes to advance to the third round and awaits the winner of Iva Jovic and Diana Shnaider.<\/p>\n \u201cIt feels good,” Pegula said to wtatennis.com. “lt’s always kind of weird coming off such a good result of a Slam, and first week, back playing — and skipping last week — it’s always a little weird. I feel like I’m playing, but I’m practicing, but it takes a while to kind of get that edge kind of back.<\/p>\n “I had some adversity in the first set and then was able to play a really clean from then on.\u201d<\/p>\n Pegula scored an early break and hold to lead 2-0 in the first set, but Gracheva stayed in it and got it back on serve with a 4-3 lead. After Pegula never looked back, claiming the final nine games and the straight sets win.\u00a0<\/p>\n Here are the numbers that defined and contextualize Pegula’s victory over Gracheva Tuesday:<\/p>\n 1: Pegula conceded just one break in the match, coming in the first set as Gracheva got it back in serve. Furthermore, among Pegula’s solid service game, she had just one double fault in the match.\u00a0<\/p>\n 2: This is the American’s second win over Gracheva on the WTA Tour, having last played in Cincinnati in 2020. Pegula won that match in a close 7-5, 7-6 (8) win.\u00a0<\/p>\n 4: The scoreline could have been closer, if it wasn’t for Pegula’s ability to hold serve. She saved 4-of-5 break points faced, including in the fourth game where — trailing 15-40 — Pegula won four straight points to hold serve.\u00a0<\/p>\n 5: On the return, Pegula notched five breaks. Arguably the most pivotal was in the first set to take a 5-4 lead as Gracheva’s forehand shot down the line stayed wide. Pegula then served for the set, and scored three more breaks in the second set bagel.\u00a0<\/p>\n 9: It was evident Gracheva was getting tired as the match progressed, and Pegula capitalized, taking the final nine games to secure the win.<\/p>\n 94: Pegula landed 45-of-48 (94%) of her first serves in the match, including four aces and one that secured the first set. She won nearly 70% of her first-service points, and on the return, won 50% of Gracheva’s first-service points.<\/p>\n \u201cI was serving really well, hitting all my spots,” Pegula said. “I was doing a good job of getting ahead in the service games. I felt like I had a little bit of a window, mixing up my spots and kind of going for some bigger serves and maybe getting a couple of aces here and there.<\/p>\n “It\u2019s something I’ve been working on a lot, so I’m glad I was able to utilize that today.\u201d<\/p>\n What’s next?<\/p>\n Pegula awaits the winner of Iva Jovic [16] and Diana Shnaider. Similar to Pegula, Jovic is playing in her first tournament since a quarterfinal run in Melbourne, while Shnaider is in the third round of a tournament for the first time since Adelaide last month.<\/p>\n Pegula has never played Jovic, but holds a 2-0 head over Shnaider — they were both straight set wins on hard court at the US Open and National Bank Open in 2024.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI think that’s going to be a really tough match for both of them,” Pegula said. “I think it’s going to be a tough match for me. I always have close matches with Diana, and Iva, we’ve never played, but I feel like she kind of plays like a mini-me, so it’s going to be tough.<\/p>\n “[Iva’s] going to have nothing to lose, and she’s been really hot, beating and winning a lot of matches this year. Either way, it’s going to be an interesting matchup, especially in these kind of hotter, fast conditions. We\u2019ll see how it goes.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Jessica Pegula entered Dubai having not played in approximately 20 days.\u00a0 The World…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":474048,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428,1959],"class_list":["post-474047","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-text"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474047","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=474047"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474047\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/474048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=474047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=474047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=474047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}