At the US Open, she advanced by qualifying in the main draw and won her first round match three years earlier due to a knee injury. Her climb in the rankings continued throughout the season as she added more WTA events to her ITF-heavy schedule – even reaching the semifinals in Washington as a wild card.
And then Pegula learned that she was suffering from a right leg injury, which was a torn labrum. She will need another surgery, this time on her hip.
For the second time in her career, Pegula was out of tennis for almost a year. And this time, knowing all that it would take her time to come back and go back to all the far-flung places on the tennis map from where she started, her mind went in the other direction.
"I didn't even know if I wanted to come back," said Pegula.
Even Pegula's family wondered how long she could hang on. It wasn't like she would have to worry about how to support herself if she decided to leave the sport – her parents Terry and Kim Pegula, owners of the Buffalo Bills and Buffalo Sabers, had a net worth of more than $5. is Arab.
"I remember thinking, 'Why does she want to do this?'" Kim Pegula said. "There are other women whose families are counting on her through tennis but they don't worry. They don't have to and if she doesn't [sport] her life will be so much easier. But so do It's because she loves the sport and she's really doing it for herself."
Five years later, Pegula is in the best phase of her career - ranked 27th, having achieved a personal goal by earning a spot on the Olympic team and continuing to make a name for herself outside the family shadow. The 27-year-old reached the quarterfinals at this year's Australian Open - her best result at a Grand Slam - and a quarter or better at four other tournaments.
"I've always thought I had the game," Pegula said in an interview with ESPN. "But there's a difference between thinking it up and then actually doing it and executing it on a bigger stage. ... So being able to cross that mental barrier gave me more confidence, and now I reach that I've gone to 'The Next Level.'
"But I've always known I can get there. And then there's always another level, so it's always right to make it the next challenge. How do I get even further?"
After hip surgery, Pegula's ranking went into free fall and dropped out of the top 800. After some thought, he decided he had worked too hard not to try to return. She went to rehab almost every day for three months and slowly returned to practice, and then finally on tour.
She advanced to her first WTA Finals in Quebec City in September 2018 and entered the Top 100 for the first time in February 2019. She made the third round at the French Open. Still, her first-round exit at Wimbledon that summer showed that competing with her best would require more than hard work.
She moved on from her coach, Jesse Levine, when she came home from the All England Club and brought in David Witt. He and Venus Williams recently parted ways after 11 years together, and he was looking for a new gig.
He teamed up two weeks before the start of the 2019 hard-court season and agreed to see how the first tournament went on a trial basis. When the two arrived in Washington for the Citi Open, Witt turned to his new pupil and said, "There's no reason you can't win this tournament. You're just as good as all the women here."
Pegula, who had never won a professional tournament in singles, was skeptical - until he won five matches in seven days to claim his first WTA title.
"He looked at me like I had a third eye when I first told him," Witt said. "But sometimes you just have to let it exist, and maybe hearing it from a different voice helped him believe in himself. We joked because it was like an eagle on your first hole but then we like were, 'What shall we do now? We have to keep following it.'"
The injury blow of 2016 also provided Pegula with an opportunity she didn't have before – to test her own business acumen, though her family ties certainly helped.
Homebound and keeping herself busy after her hip surgery, she started working on her own skin care line, Ready24. She didn't know when her tennis career would end, but she was determined to set herself up for that time. The day has come.
Pegula and her younger sister Kelly opened the first of three Buffalo-area locations at their fast casual restaurant Healthy Scratch (the others opened in 2018 and 2019) as part of the hospitality division of the family's Pegula Sports & Entertainment umbrella. Those who work with him say he is more involved in this than lending his name to something.
"Jess is calculated, confident and meticulous," said Mark Preisler, executive vice president of Pegula Sports and Entertainment. "If she's going to devote her time and effort to an endeavor, she makes sure her full attention is on it."
Pegula displayed that business savvy in April when she became the first female athlete and the first professional tennis player to launch a five-card series of non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Inspired by her fiancé Taylor Gahagen's high school friend Rob Gronkowski — yes, that Rob Gronkowski — and her NFTs, she jumped at the chance.
"When we realized we could be the first, we really wanted to do it," Pegula said. "It wasn't for financial gain, it was honestly opening the window for tennis, which can sometimes be too traditional, and open the door for women in the sport."
All proceeds went to her dog rescue charity, A Lending Paw, a passion that developed after one of her surgeries. ("She saw a lot of Animal Planets," Kim said.)
Pegula's off-court activities and passion have helped provide him with some semblance of balance during the weekly grind of the tour - this season more than ever with all the pandemic protocols and restrictions required. Pegula said that being a business owner has also helped her with her day to day work.
"Managing business content has helped me feel more comfortable making my decisions with my career," Pegula said. "I mean, tennis players, we essentially own our own team, and it's allowed me to look at it that way and I have a maturity that I didn't have when I was younger. Now that's about myself. I can make my own decisions and do what's right for me."
With one final appearance in Auckland to open the 2020 season, Pegula looked set to continue her upward trajectory before the season was called off due to the coronavirus in March. But after going through the first long break, she knew what to expect and was eager to take advantage of the rare time to improve while still being injury-free. Pegula had the added benefit of constant access to court—not many of her peers in her parents' backyard due to varying local restrictions, and she made sure to put it to good use.
"Without a timeline, it would have been so easy to take a few weeks off, but that never stopped working," Witt said. "She was like, 'I'm going to come out of this and I'm going to be in the best shape of my life and be ready to play whenever we're able to.' And I think when we came back, it was like, boom, she was out the door and she was on top of her game."
Pegula scored a run in the third round at the US Open in September and reached the quarterfinals in a French Open doubles draw with Asia Muhammad. When the Australian Open began in February, she felt a surge of confidence from her last two Slams.
"Mentally, you just have to decide whether you're going to do it," Pegula said. "For a long time you know you can do it, but it's almost like faith isn't enough, and then all of a sudden you put it aside and go, 'You know what, I just go. I am doing it.' Suddenly there is no question in your mind about it.
"I don't know if it was just a change in mindset or just confidence from all the exercises and timing in the gym, but in Australia, everything just clicked for me. For the first time, I really believed I was."
Pegula's astonishing success in Melbourne initially made headlines because of his family name. But after a three-set loss against Jennifer Brady in the quarterfinals, she gained attention for her game (albeit with the added support of the always loyal Bill Mafia) due to some friendly trash talk with Brady that went viral. Two weeks later, it made it to the semi-finals in Qatar.
Meet your @TeamUSA tennis squad. 🇺🇸 @Olympics x @Paralympics pic.twitter.com/x2YYMtZgJj
— USTA (@usta) July 1, 2021
Pegula now has six wins this season against top-10 opponents, including No. 2 Naomi Osaka at the Italian Open. She had no such victories on her resume at the start of the season.
Pegula had aimed to break into the top 50 as his first goal for the new season. He did this before leaving Australia. Then it was the top 30. She has already achieved that. The only other concrete goal he had for himself in 2021 was to make an Olympic team. He was named to the roster on 1 July.
Pegula is now focusing on achieving stable results and building each match - win or lose. After working for so long to get to this point, she said she's not taking any opportunities lightly and knows that small improvements can pay big dividends.
However, Witt has even bigger ambitions for Pegula. Much of what he told him before his victory in Washington in 2019 believes that Pegula is nowhere near his limit. He has told her that he is capable of breaking into the top 10.
"There's no reason she can't make it," Witt said. "She has been beating top-10 players and has started getting consistent results on a weekly basis. Why not?"