How Jessica Pegula turned her season around in three months

After missing four of the season’s first six WTA Tour 1000 tournaments -- plus Roland Garros -- with lingering neck and rib injuries, Jessica Pegula could be forgiven for wondering if her season was essentially over.

“There’s no shot of making the year-end finals,” she thought as the grass-court season began back in June. “I’m going to have to win a major, and multiple 1000s.”

Three months later, Pegula has, in her own words, “magically, managed to somehow move myself up in position for a spot in the WTA Finals.”

All it took was a ridiculous one-month stretch on North American hard courts, when she won in Toronto, reached the final in Cincinnati -- both WTA 1000s -- and scored a major breakthrough by advancing to the US Open final. It all added up to a scorching 15-2 record and a total of 2,950 ranking points.

Beijing: Scores | Order of Play | Draws

So guess who’s sitting at No.5 in the PIF Race to the WTA Finals in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, contemplating her third straight qualification for the year-end championships?

“I know it was always possible, you can get hot, but that wasn’t necessarily on my radar,” Pegula told wtatennis.com on Wednesday. “Obviously, there were a lot of doubts. But I trusted that the work I was doing and the mentality would come back.

“I think at the end of the day I decided to try and trust the process, trust the training. Just because I missed half the year doesn’t mean I forgot how to play at a top level. There’s so many things I’m really proud of. 

Pegula is the No.2 seed at the China Open, behind No.1 Aryna Sabalenka, the player that beat her in Cincinnati and New York. She’ll face Diane Parry -- a 4-6, 6-0, 6-0 winner over Liang En-Shuo -- in a second-round match Friday.

Recognizing a crucial career milestone in turning 30 in February, Pegula made a coaching change, separating with David Witt and hiring Mark Knowles and Mark Merklein. When those injuries forced her to miss the Middle East swing in Doha and Dubai and, later, the red-clay season that included Madrid, Rome and Paris, it didn’t look good.

“I had a lot of anxiety,” Pegula said. “I wasn’t feeling great. But slowly [the confidence] was able to build back a little bit.”

She won the title on the grass in Berlin, beating World No.2 and doubles partner Coco Gauff in the semifinals and Anna Kalinskaya in the final. In Toronto, Pegula made the Canadian Open semifinals for the fourth consecutive year and won her second consecutive title. Cincinnati featured wins over Karolina Muchova, Taylor Townsend, Leylah Fernandez and Paula Badosa.

But it was at the US Open where Pegula outdid herself. After reaching six Grand Slam quarterfinals and failing to reach the final four, Pegula found herself in a major quarterfinal for the seventh time -- facing No.1 Iga Swiatek. Pegula produced a gem, defeating Swiatek 6-2, 6-4, ending the ongoing discussion of a glass ceiling in the majors.

She followed that up with a nice win over Muchova, dropping the first set 6-1 before coming back to win in three. The final against Sabalenka was a taut 7-5, 7-5. It was a grueling two weeks, but one week later, Pegula said it felt much further away.

A friend texted her the following Saturday, saying she was doing something less than exciting -- a lot different from the previous Saturday.

“I was like, `What was she doing last Saturday night?’” Pegula said.

And then it dawned on her.

“I was like, `Oh, my God, she flew into New York City to watch the final, and we were hanging out afterward and went to dinner and got drinks,’” Pegula said. “It took me a second because it felt so long ago. But that’s how I felt if I had to put it in a nutshell.”

Reaching the final was a complicated and bittersweet experience for Pegula. Initially, she wasn’t that upset about the loss, but as she replayed the match in her mind, she began to dwell on the things she could have done better. 

“Wow,” she thought, “you were so close to calling yourself a champion and now you’re calling yourself a finalist. And that kind of sucks. But at the same time, I broke through a lot of barriers. After being upset for a couple of days, you come to the conclusion -- everyone talking to you about it and telling you, `No, it was a really great match.’ ”

Laughing, she artfully described her thought process as going through the five stages of grief -- denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

“At the end,” she said, “I’m at acceptance and appreciating the moment itself.”

After the Open, Pegula retreated to her south Florida home and decompressed. The taxing run in New York forced her to abandon hopes of defending her title in Seoul, but the rest renewed her spirit.

“I’m not as worn out as I have been in the past,” Pegula said. “I’m a little bit fresher than other people. I’m happy that it worked out. I can’t say I planned it that way.”

Through all of it, there was another factor working, too. Pegula’s personal history of responding to adversity.

“I believed coming back from injury, I’ve always come back better every time I’ve gotten hurt,” Pegula said. “Every time I’ve been out, I’ve come back and done better, been ranked higher than I was before.

“I think leaning on that past experience helped me.”