By Mollie Walker | New York Post
It was only fitting for Jessica Pegula to qualify for her maiden Grand Slam semifinal on home soil.
The No. 6-seeded Buffalo native recently revealed she would rather take the subway than a car service to the U.S. Open, but either way, she’ll be riding back to the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center after defeating world No. 1 Iga Swiatek 6-2, 6-4 on Arthur Ashe on Wednesday night.
Pegula was truly New York tough in this one, and it earned her a meeting with Karolina Muchova in the final four on Thursday.
“I would like to say I’m so happy that you guys cannot ask me about [not] making it into the semis,” she said with a smile during her post-match news conference.
“I’m really happy to be through to the semifinals. I thought I played a really clean match. Served pretty well, returned well. I feel like I didn’t really do anything that bad. Was able to kind of jump on her really early and I think frustrate her and was able to keep my level even when she picked it up in the second set.”
Wednesday night’s victory was monumental for Pegula for a myriad of reasons.
Not only did the 30-year-old come into the match with an 0-6 record in the quarterfinals in her career, but Pegula was also stifled by Swiatek the last time they met in the same round on the same stage in Flushing two years ago.
Swiatek has historically been a tough opponent for Pegula.
The Pole led their head-to-head 6-3 entering the match, capturing all but one of her six victories in straight sets.
Of Pegula’s three wins, two of them required three sets.
Between Pegula’s sharpness and Swiatek’s sloppiness, however, two sets and an hour and 28 minutes is all Pegula needed.
Breaking Swiatek twice on the way to a 4-0 first-set lead, Pegula was aggressively flat-hitting and commanding the baseline.
Though Swiatek made it rather easy at times, especially after ending the first three games with unforced errors and both service games with double-faults.
There were times when Swiatek looked caught off guard by the power behind some of Pegula’s shots.
The second set saw the two trade off the first six games before Pegula capitalized on her third break point to go ahead 4-3, snagging a 14-point battle that deflated Swiatek.
In a rare show of frustration, which also stemmed from slamming a few lobs into the net, Swiatek bashed her racquet into the net on her way to her seat.
“I felt like she was starting to push me around the court a little bit,” Pegula said of that game. “And even though I was winning some points with some good defensive points and slices and stuff like that, I still felt like I needed to keep pressuring her and doing what I was doing in the beginning that would frustrate her and not let her get into that rhythm.”
Pegula, who won 50 percent (4/8) of her break points, only let up a single point in each of the final two games she took.
The victory allows for Pegula’s spectacular summer to continue.
She’s now won 14 of her last 15 matches since returning from the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, after topping the Canadian Open and reaching the final in Cincinnati.
“I definitely think my movement is improved compared to the beginning of this year,” she said. “That’s something I’ve been working on the last couple months with the new coaches that I’ve hired.”