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 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":3,"featured_media":1018296,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[48],"tags":[62,1464,4063,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-1018295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-text","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117142562274162300","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1018295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1018295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1018295\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1018296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1018295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1018295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1018295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}