{"id":340596,"date":"2025-10-29T10:58:13","date_gmt":"2025-10-29T10:58:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/340596\/"},"modified":"2025-10-29T10:58:13","modified_gmt":"2025-10-29T10:58:13","slug":"jessica-pegula-tells-the-story-of-the-match-where-she-had-one-of-the-biggest-meltdowns-of-her-entire-career","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/340596\/","title":{"rendered":"Jessica Pegula tells the story of the match where she had one of the biggest meltdowns of her entire career"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"\/ Follow us on Google Discover <\/a> <\/p>\n

Jessica Pegula has admitted that even she has matches where she cannot keep a cool head.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Pegula lost to Coco Gauff in the Wuhan Open final<\/a> in her most recent match, and she only has one more tournament left this year at the WTA Finals<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In her time away from the match court, the American has been speaking on her podcast, with Pegula even commenting on the idea of a \u2018Six Queens Slam\u2019<\/a>.<\/p>\n

When speaking on the latest episode of her podcast, Pegula<\/a> has detailed the match where she had the biggest meltdown of her career.<\/p>\n

\"JessicaPhoto by Francois Nel\/Getty ImagesJessica Pegula calls her biggest meltdown in a match where she smashed her racket<\/p>\n

Pegula is known as one of the calmer players on tour, but not every match has been that way for the 2024 US Open<\/a> finalist.<\/p>\n

When speaking about this on The Player\u2019s Box Podcast, Pegula recalled a match she played against Elise Mertens at the Dubai Tennis Championships<\/a> in 2021.<\/p>\n

Pegula led this match by a set and 5-2, before losing the next 11 consecutive games and smashing her racket.<\/p>\n

\u201cAgainst Elise Mertens in Dubai in Covid, I was up a set and 5-2 and I had match point and I think the screen went out on one of them and we had a let, or something weird happened,\u201d said Pegula. \u201cI was playing so well and I had never beaten her. I was serve and volleying, I was playing out of my mind.<\/p>\n

\u201cI finally won a really tough first set and put myself in position to win the second. I had a couple of match points. There was a let on one of them, where the banner went out or the lights came on and they called a let.<\/p>\n

\u201cI obviously ended up losing the match but when we went into the third there was no chance for me. There was nobody in the stands. I was with David Witt at the time and I was just talking to him like \u2018I can\u2019t believe this happened, I can\u2019t believe I\u2019m here right now, this is ridiculous. The stupid lights going off\u2019 and we were well into the third. There was no chance mentally that I was coming back from that.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was pretty bad, actually. But it made it worse because there was nobody in the stands and we were playing Centre Court in Dubai. After that I did destroy a racket. The Dubai hotel is connected to the site and there is a little pathway by the pond and I really, really wanted to chuck my racket into the pond so badly. So freaking badly! <\/p>\n

\u201cI kind of wish I did it for the story now that we are fast forwarding. I think I threw it in the trash can next to the pond. But I smashed a racket, I literally walked off court, walked straight to my room and smashed it on the way. I was like screw this.\u201d<\/p>\n

When did Jessica Pegula beat Elise Mertens for the first time?<\/p>\n

That was only the second time Pegula had ever played Mertens, and they have faced each other three times since then.<\/p>\n

World number 20 Mertens leads the head-to-head against Pegula 4-1, and won their most recent meeting which took place at the Italian Open<\/a> earlier this year.<\/p>\n

The only time Pegula beat Mertens came at the Australian Open<\/a> in January, where she beat the Belgian in straight sets. <\/p>\n\nYear<\/strong><\/td>\nTournament<\/strong><\/td>\nResult<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n2020<\/td>\nCincinnati Open (QF)<\/td>\nMertens beat Pegula, 6-1 6-3<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n2021<\/td>\nDubai Tennis Championships (QF)<\/td>\nMertens beat Pegula, 5-7 7-5 6-0<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n2023<\/td>\nRoland Garros (R32)<\/td>\nMertens beat Pegula, 6-1 6-3<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n2025<\/td>\nAustralian Open (R64)<\/td>\nPegula beat Mertens, 6-4 6-2<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n2025<\/td>\nItalian Open (R32)<\/td>\nMertens beat Pegula, 7-5 6-1<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

This is one of many unexpected head-to-head scorelines in tennis and the WTA Tour<\/a>, with Jelena Ostapenko\u2019s dominant record against Iga Swiatek<\/a> one of the more standout ones.<\/p>\n

Pegula will not be able to improve this record until next year, as Mertens has not qualified for the WTA Finals in singles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Follow us on Google Discover Jessica Pegula has admitted that even she has matches where she cannot keep…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":340597,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[32355,21487,62,1464,67,132,68,2212],"class_list":{"0":"post-340596","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-elise-mertens","9":"tag-jessica-pegula","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-tennis","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-unitedstates","14":"tag-us","15":"tag-wta"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115457105111638470","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340596","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=340596"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340596\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/340597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=340596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=340596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=340596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}