Jessica Pegula holds onto sense of humor, embraces clay-court boot camp in Charleston

CHARLESTON—Three three-set matches into her Credit One Charleston Open title defense and Jessica Pegula is yet to lose her sense of humor.

“It's the only thing that keeps can me alive,” the top seed smiled after rallying to defeat Diana Shnaider on Friday. “I think I was a little bit more frustrated today after the first set, because I was just like, ‘Gosh, like seriously? Like I'm going to have to, like, win in three, like, officially now after losing the first set, and it's like the same thing.’ I got all the break points, and I didn't know if I was going to convert them and all this stuff. So, it's been a little bit of a roller coaster for me. But, yeah, my sense of humor keeps me going, I guess.”

Pegula has had to fight through the first week of the clay court season, coming back from 0-2 down in the third against all three of Yulia Putintseva, Elisabetta Cocciaretto, and now the No. 7-seeded Shnaider to reach a fourth straight semifinal in Charleston.

The struggles have caused Pegula, typically known for her placid on-court demeanor, to led out rare flashes of frustration—mainly directed against coaches Mark Knowles and Mark Merklein.

“Sometimes I'm talking to them,” Pegula admitted in her post-match press conference. “It’s hard to hear sometimes with the crowd, sometimes I'm kind of just saying things that they probably don't hear, but then I'm talking to myself at the same time.

“I was a little frustrated at the end of the first set. Like my coach kind of told me, like, ‘Your attitude hasn't been great,’ and I got kind of annoyed, and I was like, ‘Well, what do you expect it to be? Like I've been competing pretty well this week.’ And then I start rambling on to myself, like, ‘Are you fricking kidding me? Like, seriously? I think it's been fine.’ Like it was kind of not great obviously once I lost the first set. Yeah, it's hard.

“I feel like, for me, someone who doesn't show a ton of emotion, there are times where I do feel like I have to let it out, and he claims he kind of did it on purpose. I don't really know if that's true, but he was like, ‘I did kind of want you to just like almost get mad at me a little bit just to, like, stop over-thinking all the other things that were happening in the match.’”

While her quarterfinal went the distance, Pegula enjoyed her most dominant finish of the week, winning the final six games against Shnaider to book a semifinal against either Iva Jovic or Anna Kalinskaya.

“She's been playing great tennis,” Pegula said of Jovic, a fellow American who she beat last month at the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships. “Super tough competitor, very focused. Works really hard, doesn't have like a ton of holes in her game. I feel like it's an overall really solid player and I think has been playing at a really high level this whole year. And, yeah, it'll be tricky playing her on clay. It's always different than playing her on a pretty fast hard court in Dubai. So, we'll see how that kind of varies.”

Despite the bumpy transition from hard courts to clay, Pegula has managed to make at least the quarterfinals of her last 10 tournaments—a streak that dates back to last year’s US Open—and the world No. 5 is optimistic that this clay-court boot camp will set her in even greater stead once she heads to Europe for the Roland Garros swing.

I mean, my coach, we have this thing where we say it's just practice anyway. And so, we kind of just say everything is practice, even though it's not. But it is kind of true. I mean, today I was thinking of what I need to do better from yesterday, like what are things I need to work on the clay. Jessica Pegula

“I do think that this week is something that I can really build off of,” she told me on Friday. “There's a lot of things that I feel like I can get better at that I'm not doing that well right now, that I feel have a lot to do with the surface change, just my footing, my footwork, like decision making, just, you know, a lot of different things. I feel like it does kind of act as a baseline for like, ‘Okay, what can we build off this week?’ No matter what happens, whether I won or lost today or yesterday or tomorrow, it's going to be the same.

“I mean, my coach, we have this thing where we say it's just practice anyway. And so, we kind of just say everything is practice, even though it's not. But it is kind of true. I mean, today I was thinking of what I need to do better from yesterday, like what are things I need to work on the clay.”

Riding an eight-match win streak on green clay, Pegula may be keeping things light but the American is still deadly serious as she closes in on a second straight Charleston Open title.