Jessica Pegula’s Cincinnati Open campaign has seen more twists and turns than a King Island roller coaster — but the No. 3 seed keeps finding a way to win.<\/p>\n
But Pegula\u2019s latest Cincinnati see-saw might’ve been her most impressive yet: a 7-5, 4-6, 6-4 semifinal win over defending champion Iga Swiatek on Saturday that lasted nearly 3 hours and snapped the Pole\u2019s 10-match winning streak in the process.<\/p>\n
Pegula trailed 3-1 in the final set before coming back to book a spot in Sunday\u2019s championship in what she dubbed a “crazy” tilt — marking her second trip to the Cincinnati final in the last three years.<\/p>\n
“I felt like we were playing well at times and then not playing well at times, so it was really tough to get a gauge on the match,” she said, “so [I’m] really happy with the way I was able to handle a lot that was going on today.”<\/p>\n
The win was Pegula’s third straight three-setter — all in the last four days — and her 17th of the season, which ties her career-most in a single season with 2023 and 2025. In three setters this year, she has a 17-5 record with an 11-2 mark on the hard courts.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I’m definitely going to break the record then because the year’s not even close to being over,” Pegula laughed. “I think that I’m able to play my game over the course of two and three sets. I think it’s the way that I play.<\/p>\n
“It gives me a little bit of an advantage where I think like my opponent has to really — I don’t know what the word is — kind of get me off of my rhythm. I think that’s really hard to do sometimes, especially on a hard court against me.”<\/p>\n
Saturday’s rollercoaster followed a quarterfinal win against Amanda Anisimova where she took an off-court medical timeout. But after taking a complete rest day on Friday — she didn’t even come to the tournament site — the World No. 3 confessed to feeling “much better” against Swiatek.<\/p>\n
“I had played enough tennis the last couple days, and when I came out this morning … I didn’t feel anything at all that was ailing me in the match against Amanda,” she said.<\/p>\n
The two players took a while to get going in their 13th career head-to-head meeting, which began with a short rain delay, and was also briefly interrupted two games in. The first five games were breaks as wind swirled, and after Pegula held at love to lead 4-2,\u00a0Swiatek won the next three games before Pegula broke again for a 6-5 lead. She took the set when Swiatek smacked a volley into the net on set point.<\/p>\n
“It was a lot of back and forth and I think I did a good job of no matter what was happening, just staying focused on what I wanted to do to win the match,” Pegula said.<\/p>\n
She also said that the court conditions in Cincinnati facilitated a game plan that’s given her success against Swiatek on hard courts in particular. Of Pegula’s six wins against Swiatek, five have been on hard courts.<\/p>\n
“I think even though we weren’t serving great today in the first set, I think from the first game I was standing on top of the baseline trying to take away time and space from her, which I feel like is how I’ve been successful against her more specifically on a hard court,” she continued.<\/p>\n
“I know the conditions here. I’m able to do that a little bit more than other places and that’s kind of how I wanted to play. I think at the end of the day that’s what I did really well all the way up until the end of the match.”<\/p>\n
The match ultimately featured 13 breaks of serve, two of which were handed over by double faults from Swiatek. In the ninth game of the decider, Pegula put Swiatek in a 0-40 hole, but ultimately converted on her fourth break point after the Pole sent a forehand long and served up her seventh double fault of the day.<\/p>\n
In her ninth career WTA 1000 final, Pegula will face No. 4 seed Coco Gauff in the first all-American Cincinnati final since 1970.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jessica Pegula’s Cincinnati Open campaign has seen more twists and turns than a King Island roller coaster —…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":822743,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428,1959],"class_list":["post-822742","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\/822742","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=822742"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/822742\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/822743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=822742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=822742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=822742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}