Faced with wearing Travis Kelce jersey, Jessica Pegula serves cheddar apple pie to Madison Keys at Australian Open

MELBOURNE, Australia—We knew what was on the line for Madison Keys coming into her Australian Open fourth round with Jessica Pegula—a slice of cheddar apple pie—but Pegula waited for her on-court interview to reveal what had been in store for her had she lost to her good friend on Monday.

“I was going to have to wear a Travis Kelce Kansas City Chiefs jersey,” Pegula told CoCo Vandeweghe after a 6-3, 6-4 win over the defending champion. “That definitely gave me extra motivation today.”

Pegula and Keys light-heartedly hyped their Round of 16 clash as the first match between two podcast co-hosts—the two share hosting duties with Jennifer Brady and Desirae Krawczyk on *The Player’s Box*—but the bet became more serious for the former, whose family has more than a mere emotional stake in the National Football League.

“Yeah that was bad,” Pegula told me when I asked about the bet in her post-match press conference. “[Madi] was, like, ‘Mine's worse.’ I was, like, ‘What are you talking about? My family owns the Bills. This team has owned us in the postseason. Absolutely not, by far worse.’

“I saw Iva Jovic in the locker room before I went on, and she was, like, ‘If you lose, that's way worse wearing the Chiefs jersey.’ I'm, like, ‘Yeah, all she has to do is eat a piece of pie. What is the big deal?’ Yeah, I think that was really some extra motivation, because that would have been a tough moment for me.”

The final details of the bet are yet to be hashed out, but Pegula believes Keys will take her sweet-savory lumps courtesy of Brady in Orlando.

“I don't think Madi is going to go out of her way to get this pie or cheese, so I think it's going to be a Jenny task,” joked Pegula after reaching a ninth career Grand Slam quarterfinal.

“People eat apples with cheese,” she continued emphatically. “It's not that big of a deal. It's definitely not as bad as it sounds. We got off to a bad start because I randomly said it in a recording, and everyone freaked out, because someone pulled up a picture, and if you Google it, it looks really bad. They also Googled it, looked like it was a Kraft single piece of cheese.

“I was, ‘Okay, no, get like a good cheese.’ Don't put a Kraft, the plastic thing and just put it on there and, like, that sounds really bad. So, you've got to get a good cheese. It's not as bad as everyone thinks.”

Pegula knows good tennis in addition to good cheese in Melbourne, breezing into the last eight with the loss of just 17 games. A disappointed but philosophical Keys gave Pegula her props after the match.

“Jess does a really good job at taking time away,” said Keys, who felt Pegula was “dictating play” on Rod Laver Arena. “She redirects incredibly well, so it's kind of a catch-22 sometimes with her, because it's almost like the more pace you give her, the quicker the ball is coming back at you.

“I think another thing that I don't think she always gets as much credit for is she hits a lot of very deep balls, so you can't really do a whole lot with them, or if you do, you kind of have to take a little bit more of a risk just because she does a really good job of kind of pushing people off of the baseline as she's slowly taking her baseline…So, I think that's always been, I think, in my opinion, her superpower.”

Where Pegula’s consistency has regularly taken her to this stage at a major tournament since 2021, it’s only recently the No. 6 seed has begun to more regularly factor beyond the quarterfinals—a narrative Pegula sees as more media-driven than anything else.

“I mean, the fact that I'm putting myself in that many positions I feel like is a feat in itself. I didn't really quite understand that,” said Pegula, a US Open finalist in 2024 and a semifinalist in 2025.

Looking to make her first major semifinal outside of Flushing Meadows, she will face fellow American Amanda Anisimova, guaranteeing at least one U.S. woman into the final four.

“I think that's great for American tennis,” said Pegula.

“Yeah, it's been pretty crazy how well the women have been doing and how many top-ranked girls there are. I'm just happy to be a part of that conversation.”

Although for Pegula, any conversation that isn’t about Kansas City is probably a great one.