Jessica Pegula lost to Aryna Sabalenka in the US Open semi-finals. Before that came the 2024 and 2025 finals, both lost to the same player. Three times in a row at the same tournament.
Some observers see Sabalenka’s temper as a brake on her level. Pegula thinks the opposite: it’s that energy, negative as it may be, that keeps the Belarusian where she is. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a player play that well while she’s visibly furious,” she said, in comments published on Sunday by We Love Tennis.
For herself, the maths are different: “When I get angry, I start hitting too hard and I get even angrier.” Céline, our C30.4 (a club-level ranking), paused the video right there.
That, technically, is me. I get annoyed, the arm speeds up, I lose the zone, and then I get annoyed about the lost zone. The difference is that Pegula calls it a flaw and says it in a semi-final in New York. I say it on a Sunday at ten under the bubble, with a substitute’s phone buzzing during the rally. The level in club league (interclubs, Belgium’s weekend team league) has gone way up, people don’t realise.
Céline also noted the bit where Pegula says she can’t picture Sabalenka playing without being angry, and reckons she’d be less effective that way. To Céline that’s an intention, so something you can work on, so something she could install on a Tuesday evening if court 4 were ever free.
Which leaves the one tactical instruction in the whole statement: according to Pegula, it’s better not to make Sabalenka angry.
So the plan is to do nothing. Noted. Except a player who’s going to get angry gets there on her own by the second game, on a ball nobody called. I know that plan, I run it every Sunday, and it never lasts two games. Two practice sessions away, mind you.
It’s true, we checked: We Love Tennis.
