jessica pegula yacht

Her father Terry, an entrepreneur in the oil and gas industry, founded East Resources in 1983 with £6,000 borrowed from friends and family. His wealth grew through successful fracking, enabling him to buy the Sabres in 2010 for £150m with his wife Kim.

Four years later, that same couple snapped up the Bills for a massive £1.1 billion and they're big bosses at Pegula Sports and Entertainment too.

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Their daughter, tennis ace Jessica Pegula, knows she's had a leg up thanks to her family's fortune. She told the Guardian : "I think people root more for the underdog, so I've never really felt like people are really rooting for my story."

Pegula has raked in about £9.9m playing tennis and is thought to be worth £5.6m, not counting her parents' mega money. With her dad Terry Pegula worth a huge £5.4bn, it's no wonder she's seen as the richest player swinging a racket.

But with all that cash, it's still Pegula's passion for tennis and her own drive that keeps her smashing it on the court. Pegula, who is just two months shy of her 30th birthday, only started making waves on the WTA tour in 2019 when she won her first title at the Washington Open. Since then, she's bagged another three titles, including two this year, which have catapulted her into the top five players globally.

Off the court, Pegula and her family reside in a £2.2m waterfront mansion in Florida . Jessica Pegula tied the knot with Taylor Gahagen in 2021, and their wedding was super fancy with a cake that had seven layers! Taylor used to be a top dog at Pegula Sports and now he's a marketing whiz for the Sabres.

The pair love animals heaps and started 'A Lending Paw' to help dogs in need find homes. They have three furry friends named Maddie, Dexter, and Tucker.

They also owned a £13.5m super yacht with six cabins that could sleep 12 people comfortably. However, they traded it in for an even grander £60m yacht. When not sailing, Pegula enjoys her collection of classic cars, including a Mercedes-Benz GLE 53 AMG and a Ford Mustang GT.

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Jessica Pegula

• Jessica Pegula has a career-high WTA ranking of No. 28 in singles and No. 55 in doubles, both achieved on May 17, 2021.

Who is Jessica Pegula?

• Jessica Pegula is an American professional tennis player. She is the eldest daughter of Terry Pegula and his second wife Kim S. Pegula. Terry Pegula is an American billionaire businessman, with interests in natural gas development, real estate, entertainment, and professional sports. 

• Her mother Kim S. Pegula is a South Korean-born American businesswoman and, along with her husband, Terry Pegula, one of the principal owners of the Buffalo Bills in the National Football League.
•  In 2018, Pegula reached her first WTA singles final at the Tournoi de Québec in September as a qualifier. She beat Kristýna Plíšková, Ons Jabeur, second seed Petra Martić and fifth seed Sofia Kenin en route to the final, where she lost to eighth seed Pauline Parmentier in straight sets. This brought her ranking back inside the top 200 and helped her finish the year inside the top 125.
• Pegula attained major success at the Australian Open, defeating former Australian Open champion and 12th seed Victoria Azarenka, Kristina Mladenovic, former US Open champion Samantha Stosur and fifth seed Elina Svitolina to reach her first Grand Slam quarterfinal where she lost to eventual runner-up Jennifer Brady despite winning the first set. This strong showing at the Australian Open in February allowed Pegula to enter the top 50 for the first time and took her to a new career-high ranking of world No. 43. 

What nationality is Jessica Pegula?

• Jessica Pegula was born on 24th February 1994 in Buffalo, New York, the USA. Her birth name is Jessica Pegula. He holds an American nationality and belongs to mixed ethnicity. She has Korean ancestry from her mother's side while she is American from her father's side. Pisces is her star sign. She has kept his faith in Christianity since her childhood. 
• Jessica Pegula was born into a wealthy family. Her father, Terry Pegula, is an American professional sports investor and natural gas tycoon, and a multi-billionaire. Her mother, Kim S. Pegula, is a South Korean-born American businesswoman. She has two younger siblings: a sister named Kelly Pegula and a brother named Matthew Pegula. She also has two half-siblings, Michael and Laura born from her father's first marriage. 
• Jessica attended an expensive private school in Buffalo City. She finished high school through online classes to work around her tennis schedule. After her high school graduation, Jessica attended the University of Pittsburgh, in the Pennsylvania state of the United States where she played college tennis actively. 

Who does Jessica Pegula date?

• Despite being 27 years old, Jessica Pegula hasn't married yet. However, she is currently dating a handsome guy named Taylor Gahagen. Taylor Gahagen is a huge lover of dogs and other pet animals. 
• Her boyfriend has opened a dog rescue A Lending Paw with the slogan "Saving one dog will not change the world, but surely it will yours and theirs."
• Scrolling through Pegula's Instagram, she started posting pictures with Taylor in 2015. Their fans believe that the two is together since then.  

How rich is Jessica Pegula?

• As of June 2021, the estimated net worth of Jessica Pegula is more than $3 million. Born with a silver spoon in her mouth Jessie Pegula has a lavish lifestyle. Her father's net worth is $5.4 billion as of June 2020 while her mother's net worth is $100 Million. Furthermore, Jessie herself has earned a good deal of money out of her tennis career. She has reportedly won a career prize money of US $1,983,853 from her beginning career till now.
• In 2018, she reached her first WTA singles final at the Tournoi de Québec as a qualifier and ultimately won the first WTA title the following season at the Washington Open. In 2020, she was an ASB Classic Finalist.
• In August 2016, Pegula and her sister opened a quick-serve restaurant named, Healthy Scratch in LECOM Harborcenter, which is an ice hockey-themed mixed-use development owned by her parents in Buffalo, New York. The following year the Healthy Scratch business was to be expanded to food truck service. That same year, Pegula introduced her own skincare line called Ready 24.
• Her parents Terry and Kim Pegula own vast property across New York state and Pennsylvania. They have brought multi-million mansions in Pittsburgh and have also purchased an 11,159 sq ft villa in Western New York known as  Aurora estate for $2.5 million. Her father is also the owner of the luxurious Yacht called "The Top Five yacht" built by Hakvoort in 2021. The superyacht is designed by Sinot Yacht Design. 

How tall is Jessica Pegula?

• Jessica Pegula is 5 ft 7 inches tall and her body weight is 70 Kg. She has an hourglass-shaped body figure. Her curvaceous body measures 36-28-37 inches. The dress size of 4 (US) perfectly fits on her body. 
• She feels comfortable wearing a shoe size of 10 (US). She has a pair of brown eyes. She looks elegant in her silky and straight hair that is black in color. She does exercise regularly and goes to the gym every day. 

Facts About Jessica Pegula

• #1 Pegula reached the ATP women's top 100 in February 2019.
• #2 She defeated world No. 12, Anastasija Sevastova in the 2019 Volvo Car Open – Singles.
• #3 In the 2021 Italian Open, she recorded the biggest victory of her career over world No. 2 Naomi Osaka.
• #4 After the one at the 2021 Dubai Tennis Championships, she entered the top 30 for the first time.
• #5 She is coached by Jesse Levine.
• #6 She played right-handed (two-handed backhand).
• #7 Her mother was adopted at the age of 5 by Ralph and Marilyn Kerr.
• #8 She is a very powerful and skilled player.
• #9 Pegula began playing tennis at the age of 7.
• #10 Her current coach is David Witt.
• American tennis player
• Taylor Gahagen
• Terry Pegula
• Kim S. Pegula

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Jessica Pegula is world’s richest tennis star, heiress to $4bn whose dad Terry outbid Trump to buy the Buffalo Bills

• Published : 13:00, 23 Jan 2023
• Updated : 14:41, 30 Jun 2023

THE heiress to a billionaire's fortune, tennis sensation Jessica Pegula needn't work for a living.

But the 29-year-old American star is the world No4 in singles and No3 in doubles.

So far she's earned an impressive $9.1million (£7.1m) in prize money - but that's just a drop in the ocean to what she stands to inherit.

Because she's the pretty daughter of Terry Pegula, once the 255th richest person, who made a $4billion (£3.23bn) fortune from natural gas development.

The self-made businessman owns NFL giants Buffalo Bills - who he bought in 2014 after outbidding Donald Trump and Bon Jovi, and various other sport franchises.

And if that's not enough, Jessica could also take her dad's $16m superyacht for a spin in her downtime.

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Astonishingly, she is richer than the worth of retired icons Roger Federer , Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova COMBINED.

It would've been easy for Jessica to retire from tennis during tough years.

Plagued by persistent hip and knee injures, she truly considered it - before defying the odds with her climb up the WTA Tour rankings as well as teaming up for an impressive doubles pair with Coco Gauff.

Pegula is a three-time Australian Open quarter-finalist and she made the last eight at the French and US, but never beyond the third round Wimbledon.

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Jessica's biggest determination is to make a name for herself, and not just be Terry Pegula's daughter.

The star - who also launched skincare brand Ready24 - told Wide World of Sport : "When I was younger, it was more like I wanted to make a name for myself and then I realised as I got older, I should embrace the whole family aspect of it instead.

"It was almost hurting me in a way because it wasn't going to go away and I learned to embrace that, kind of have fun with it.

" Tennis is my thing, it's my job, it's my career. It's very separate and my parents don't really have any say right now in anything I do on the court."

HER DAD'S IN SPORT

Terry Pegula first worked at a petroleum engineer for Getty Oil, before setting up his own company called East Resources in 1983 with a $6,000 loan from his family.

He began by searching and drilling for oil, and later moved into natural gas.

In 2010, he sold assets to East Resources to Royal Dutch Shell for a staggering $3.8bn, and four years later the remaining assets were sold for $1.4bn to American Energy Partners, LP.

By that time, his sports group - Pegula Sports and Entertainment - was in business, with Terry's wife Kim installed as CEO and president.

Their biggest coup came in 2014 when they managed to beat rival bids from former US president Donald Trump and rock star Bon Jovi to buying NFL giants the Buffalo Bills for around $1.2bn .

PSE have also owned NHL franchise Buffalo Sabres since 2011, after paying $150m for the hockey team.

Aside from their sporting interests, not much is known about how the Pegula family, who keep their lives very private.

They live in a $2.8m gated five-bedroom mansion in Boca Raton, Florida.

Terry's also big on charity. He donated $83m for the building of Pegula Ice Arena at Penn State University.

And he gave Houghton College in New York $10m to fund the Kerr-Pegula Athletic Complex.

However, perhaps his most extravagant purchase was his stunning $16m superyacht called 'Top Five'.

Built by Christensen Shipyards in 2005, there's room on board for 12 guests in its six cabins.

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Although reports suggested Pegula was looking to sell it and is currently building a new, bigger yacht to replace it.

Perhaps it would make a nice hand-me-down for Jessica, should he fail to attract any buyers?

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Inside the life of world's richest tennis star Jessica Pegula with classic cars and yacht

25 december 2023 10:30.

Source: DailyExpress

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Top things you did not know about U.S. tennis star Jessica Pegula

Olympics.com takes a look at some curious facts about Jessica Pegula who is making waves at the 2023 WTA Tour Finals in Cancun. Did you know that her parents own the Buffalo Bills and Buffalo Sabres?

Don't call U.S. tennis star Jessica Pegula a late bloomer.

The 29-year-old has turned professional in 2013 and has been ranked as high as No. 3 in the world.

After defeating fellow American Coco Gauff on Saturday (4 November), Pegula has secured a spot in the finals of the the season-ending WTA Finals in Cancun, Mexico.

Pegula has showed fine form recently claiming the Korea Open before a winning streak at the WTA Finals, including over world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka .

Here are five things you might not know about Pegula.

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Jessica Pegula’s parents own an NFL and NHL team

Her parents, Terry and Kim Pegula , are the multi-billionaire owners of the NFL team Buffalo Bills and the NHL team Buffalo Sabres .

Terry and Kim had the winning bid to purchase the Bills back in 2014 ahead of Donald Trump and Bon Jovi .

They have owned the NHL franchise Sabres since 2011.

Jessica Pegula’s mom is from the Republic of Korea

After a trip to the 2019 Korea Open with her family, Jessica Pegula wanted to get closer to her Asian roots. Her mother Kim was born in Seoul, where she was left by her parents outside a police station.

She was adopted and brought to Fairport, New York at five years old after staying in an orphanage.

Fast forward.

Jessica Pegula has embraced her role as an ambassador for the Asian American community. 

“Young girls will come up to me – maybe they are from Korea, or maybe they have one Asian parent like me – and their message is usually something like this: ‘We love you and your mom’,” she told buffalobills.com .

Jessica Pegula: A big dog lover

Jessica Pegula LOVES dogs. 

When Pegula and her partner Taylor Gahagen got married in 2021, they took the wedding photos together with their three furry friends.

Pegula is an ambassador and Gahagen the president at 'A Lending Paw', a charity that trains rescue dogs to become service animals.

Jessica Pegula plays golf

Jessica Pegula is not just good at swinging a racket, she also knows how to swing golf clubs.

Ahead of this year’s Wimbledon, she posted a clip on her Instagram page showing off her golf skills with the caption “grass szn prep”.

Check it out below. 

Could this be her future as an athlete once her tennis career ends?

Jessica Pegula: Ranked world No. 1 in doubles

Pegula and compatriot Coco Gauff currently lead the WTA doubles world ranking.

The American duo reached the women's doubles final of the 2022 French Open , and they won the Miami Open earlier this year.

They are the first all-USA team since 2012 to reach the top of the rankings.

In singles, Pegula is currently  ranked fifth in the world.

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By Chris Oddo

For five productive years, Jessica Pegula and longtime coach David Witt were a tandem to be reckoned with. The Buffalo, New York native rocketed up the rankings with Witt at the helm, rising from a peak ranking well outside the Top 50 to become a perennial Top 10 player and a regular participant in the business end at Grand Slams. 

But as the saying goes, all good things must come to an end…

In 2024, solidly entrenched in the Top 5 and operating as one of the elite talents in the women’s game, Pegula went for a surprising shake-up. She parted ways with Witt, who also acted as Venus Williams ’ coach from 2007 to 2018, after this year’s Australian Open and explained her decision at BNP Paribas Open Media Day on Wednesday. 

Having recently turned 30 (on February 24), Pegula believes it is time to let change be a catalyst.

“It definitely does [feel like a new beginning],” she said of the parting of ways, which was confirmed in early February. “David and I obviously had a lot of success and what we were able to accomplish together was pretty amazing but I think having started with him when I was maybe 25, and then being 30 this year, I think I’m just in a much different place – a different ranking, a different place personally and career-wise.” 

Still wanting to tick the next level in her already world-class career, Pegula confessed that she was motivated by a fear of regret. 

“I just felt like I needed to take some chances,” she said. “I’m 30 – not that being 30 is the end – and I think I just didn’t want to look back and be like ‘maybe I should have tried someone else, or tried something different.’”

Pegula, who will face either Anna Blinkova or Karolina Pliskova in the second round on Saturday, says she felt a strong desire to get out of her comfort zone. 

For the moment, she is working with a duo coaching tandem of former doubles stalwart Mark Knowles and Mark Merklein, a former ATP No. 160 who also previously coached alongside Bryan Shelton (father of Ben Shelton) at the University of Florida. 

But no official arrangement has been announced. 

“Obviously I’d been successful, it’s not like I’d been losing and I needed to change something,” she said. “More or less, it was just me wanting to make a change and I felt like it came pretty naturally. It wasn’t anything bad, it was just more me starting a little bit of a new chapter in my career. 

“I think it was just more to keep pushing myself, and I didn’t want to feel too comfortable. I kind of wanted to change things up and I think being uncomfortable makes you learn new things and pushes you in new directions and can be really helpful.”

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Jessica Pegula Draws Inspiration From Her Mother’s Healing. It’s Mutual.

For more than a year, Kim Pegula has been recovering from cardiac arrest. Her daughter Jessica’s climb in the tennis rankings reflects the strength the two find in each other.

By David Waldstein

Reporting from London

It was already Tuesday in Sydney, Australia, but Jessica Pegula was watching “Monday Night Football” on her phone on Jan. 3 as she waited to go onto the court at the United Cup. Suddenly, she felt the same sickening fear many football fans had that day, but perhaps with more resonance.

On her small device, she witnessed Damar Hamlin, a safety for the Buffalo Bills, collapsing on the turf and saw the frantic moments as paramedics attempted to revive him and bundled him into an ambulance after his heart stopped beating.

She knew how critical each one of those seconds was for Hamlin, who eventually made a remarkable recovery. Her mother, Kim Pegula, who is the president and an owner of the Bills, along with her husband, Terry Pegula, went into cardiac arrest in her sleep a little over a year ago. Kim Pegula’s recovery has been a slow, difficult process, made more challenging by the loss of oxygen when it happened.

Jessica Pegula was so shaken that she considered not playing in the United Cup, but she eventually did. Days later, at the Australian Open, she wore a No. 3 patch on her outfit to honor Hamlin. Coincidentally, No. 3 was her singles ranking at the time, an astonishing achievement considering everything she had been through in the previous six months.

The family sat vigil at Kim Pegula’s hospital bedside for days last June. Jessica left to play at Wimbledon with a jumble of emotions but also with the knowledge that it was what her mother wanted. Riddled with worry, worn down from the previous weeks and saddled with a sinus infection, she lost in the third round.

But somehow, as her mother made steady progress, Pegula continued to play the best tennis of her career at age 28 (she turned 29 in February). She reached a semifinal of the Canadian Open and, for the first time, a quarterfinal of the U.S. Open — her third major quarterfinal of the year. She won the Guadalajara, Mexico, event last October and, in January, reached another quarterfinal at the Australian Open. At No. 4 in the world, she is the top-ranked American woman.

On Sunday, she checked off another quarterfinal appearance when she demolished Lesia Tsurenko, in straight sets. She has now reached the quarterfinal stage at each of the four major tournaments. But for the sixth time in six tries, her pursuit of her first Grand Slam semifinal was blocked. She fell two games short, as Marketa Vondrousova came back from a 1-4 deficit in the third set to beat Pegula, 6-4, 2-6, 6-4, on Tuesday.

It was as close as Pegula has come to making a major semifinal and, considering how close she was, it was crushing. But it was just tennis, and later she took comfort in reflecting on how different she felt at this Wimbledon compared with last year’s, which came just a few weeks after her mother fell ill.

“A year ago when I came here, I didn’t have any warm up,” she said. “My mom basically almost died. I think a year coming around to make quarters, to see that she’s able to watch my match, was a huge success for myself and for my family.”

Still, it has been difficult traveling during these last 12 months and being away from her mother, who urges Pegula to fight on, just as she has.

Pegula explained how her mother, who with Terry Pegula also owns the N.H.L.’s Buffalo Sabres, helped shape her tennis career without being overbearing. She said her mother had mostly left the tennis to others but had helped brainstorm ideas to help her get better and to navigate the complex and unforgiving world of professional tennis. She always took inspiration from her mother’s example of hard work and independent strength. Now, she says, her mother is taking inspiration from watching her on the court.

In an article in The Players’ Tribune in February, Pegula first revealed the events surrounding her mother’s illness and recovery, and outlined how she was playing on for her. On Sunday, after her fourth-round win, she spoke of the strength and motivation each was drawing from the other.

“She wants to watch me on TV,” Jessica Pegula said Sunday. “I think that inspires her in her recovery, as well, to see me out there still playing.”

And, despite Tuesday’s loss, playing well. Now healthy after injuries disrupted her progression through the ranks, Pegula has cashed in on consistency, her current No. 4 ranking tucking her in just behind the newly crowned Big Three of No. 1 Iga Swiatek, No. 2 Aryna Sabalenka and No. 3 Elena Rybakina.

Pegula expresses no outward resentment that she is not included in their ranks, but she makes it clear that she is striving to shake up the perception that the top of the women’s tour is a triad.

“I would definitely love to crash the Big Three party, if possible,” she said. “That would definitely be a goal. I mean, those girls have been playing really well.”

All of those women are at least four years younger than Pegula. She was asked if experience had led to her recent success, but she insisted that health had been more important. Her career has been stalled by a knee injury and hip surgery, and being in the gym rehabilitating is an experience that differs from on-court matches.

She also said her consistency was no accident. When she reached her first major quarterfinal, at the Australian Open in 2021, she was determined not to leave it all to waste in the subsequent tournament in Doha, Qatar. She was ranked 44th at the time and had to win three qualifying rounds to enter that event, and ended up capturing six consecutive matches before falling in the final to No. 4 Petra Kvitova.

“I don’t want to be that person that made the quarters of a Slam and then loses first round,” she said, and added, “I took a lot of confidence from that.”

She has now reached the quarterfinals in five of the last seven Grand Slam events and is only the fifth American to reach the quarters at all four majors in the last 25 years, joining Venus Williams, Serena Williams, Sloane Stephens and Madison Keys, who made a quarterfinal on Monday by beating the 16-year-old Russian phenomenon Mirra Andreeva in three sets. Keys is scheduled to face Sabalenka on Wednesday.

But the semifinal stage remains elusive for Pegula, and she could not say why.

“I was one game away today, almost,” she said. “I don’t really know what the answer is. I keep putting myself in good positions. But I guess it’s not enough.”

A few hours after her loss to Vondrousova, Pegula lost again in her doubles match. She and Coco Gauff fell to Laura Siegemund and Vera Zvonareva, making it a perfectly miserable day. But she will return to the United States and, if time allows, see her mother. Soon enough, with the hardcourt season underway, she will be playing again, with Kim Pegula watching from home, and that is a great victory.

“She wouldn’t want me doing anything else,” Pegula said of her mother. “I think she would want me to keep winning and to keep competing and putting myself out there.”

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Have You Heard About Jessica Pegula?

At last year’s U.S. Open, a casual fan could be forgiven for thinking American tennis started and ended with Serena Williams , whose impending retirement was properly commemorated on what seemed like every LED screen or slab of polyethylene in Queens. They should have been familiar, too, with Coco Gauff, the teenage phenom out of South Florida. And by the end of the tournament, many had fallen for Frances Tiafoe , the affable and athletic Marylander who upset Rafael Nadal and reached the semifinals. But the highest ranked American — then and now; man or woman — was a less trumpeted talent: Jessica Pegula, who made her way to the quarterfinals in methodical fashion before falling, like most did at some point during the 2022 season, to eventual champion Iga Świątek.

Pegula enters the year’s final Grand Slam, which begins on Monday, ranked No. 3 in the world and enjoying a career-best season. A model of consistency and steady improvement on the otherwise fickle women’s tennis tour, she has reached the quarters of five of the last seven majors and been a permanent if somewhat overlooked fixture near the top of the rankings for well over a year. When Pegula is spotlighted by the national media, it’s often in the same breath as her unusually gilded pedigree: She is the daughter of Kim and Terry Pegula ; he is the petroleum magnate who in 2010 sold the natural gas and oil company he founded, East Resources, for an estimated $6.5 billion. He would eventually use those profits to purchase two major-league sports franchises, the Buffalo Bills and Buffalo Sabres, which makes his daughter, by most metrics, one of the several wealthiest athletes in the world.

Money can buy you elite instruction and state-of-the-art facilities and maybe even the eyeballs of top coaches and recruiters. But it will not buy you nerve and competitiveness, durability and precise timing, the properties of Pegula’s game most responsible for her impressive mid-career march to the top rungs of women’s tennis. Good health helps too: Injuries to her knee and hip kept Pegula off the tour for large chunks of time between 2014 and 2017, the year she finished the season ranked 627. She was in her early 20s, the stage of a tennis player’s career when the pundit class, accustomed to child prodigies, tends to anoint its wunderkinds. Instead, Pegula toiled in relative anonymity, finally cracking the top 100 in 2019.

“I was not touted to be a superstar,” she told me. “I wasn’t a Madison Keys or Coco Gauff or Sloane Stephens. I didn’t have that aura around me, and I’m glad I didn’t, because I feel like that would’ve been really difficult.”

The world No. 3, now at the manifestly advanced age of 29, had just won the biggest tournament of her career — the prestigious U.S. Open tune-up tournament in Montreal — and then flown to Cincinnati for the tune-up tournament there when we spoke earlier this month. “My credentials flew in this morning,” she said, with her typical good nature, belying the day-to-day strain of the circuit. “I just got to the site approximately six minutes ago.” Two days earlier, at the Masters event in Canada, she earned her second win this year over Świątek, the four-time Slam winner and world No. 1, before routing Liudmila Samsonova in the final.

“It’s always great to win tournaments, and it helps you believe even further in those bigger moments when you’re deep in a Slam,” she said. “I’m hoping that’s what last week did for me.” The trophy presentation in Montreal, I joked, had taken place less than 24 hours before. “It’s a crazy sport. You don’t feel like you get to really celebrate,” she said. “It’s like, all right, you’re already in the draw, the tournament’s already started, so you’ve got to get to Cincinnati.” There, Gauff — Pegula’s friend and frequent doubles partner, with whom she reached the 2022 French Open final — won the title, positioning the pair among a handful of favorites to win the U.S. Open.

Pegula has at least four years on the other three front-runners — Świątek, Aryna Sabalenka, and Elena Rybakina — whose styles of play, she concedes, are more arresting than hers, with their big serves or punishing forehands. “I don’t really have an outstanding shot,” said Pegula, though her cool, neighborly temperament — she memorably enjoyed a Heineken in her post-match press conference after last year’s U.S. Open loss — shouldn’t be mistaken for self-effacement. “I’m not sliding in and out of corners like Iga. I don’t have this massive serve where I’m hitting ten aces a match.” Pegula hits hard and flat and seems to always make contact in the dead center of the racquet frame, calling to mind the pure ball-striking abilities of compatriots like Lindsay Davenport and Jennifer Capriati. The pace of her shots, she explained, doesn’t always register on television. “It doesn’t look like I’m doing much,” she added. “I’ll have other players come up to me and be like, ‘Don’t they realize that you hit harder than this person and that person?’ So sometimes, there’s this misconception that I’m a counterpuncher, which I wouldn’t say I am.”

Pegula, who wrote an open-hearted essay in The Players Tribune about the cardiac arrest her mother suffered last summer, is among the more candid and plainspoken athletes on the tour. When I asked about her 0–6 record in Major quarterfinals, she was unequivocal about the psychic toll of professional tennis: “You’re rewarded this ranking and told you’re supposed to do well at these tournaments,” she said, “but it’s not that easy. You’re basically not allowed to have a bad day. And if you do, you’ll probably lose. And then you feel kind of like you suck.”

But you will not find Pegula thwacking her racquet or giving up on a match, and the zen she demonstrates both on and off the court has begun to pay dividends. “I’ll definitely get really upset, but I feel like it always phases out after a day or two,” she told me. “Usually I feel better when I start working on something. And I think it’s easier if you love the game and have a passion for it too.”

Pegula’s love for tennis could hardly be called into question; she is not wanting for prize money, and few are the billionaire scions who would endure the kinds of physical and emotional setbacks she has over a decade on tour only to find themselves peaking as she approaches 30. Since being elected to the WTA Players Council in 2021, Pegula has also taken up the issue of pay parity. Though each of the four Grand Slam have awarded men and women equal prize money since 2007, massive discrepancies remain at the tour-level events. In Canada, for instance, where both men and women play best-of-three sets, Pegula earned $454,500 for winning the title, while Jannik Sinner, the men’s champion, took home just over $1 million. If Pegula, for obvious reasons, seems an unlikely or at least ironic torchbearer for the cause, she’s a cogent and credible envoy for the players ranked well below her, who struggle to live comfortably while shouldering the considerable financial burdens of life on the tour.

“For the most part, I think I have a lot of respect from my peers on tour, so I don’t think any of them really see that as a problem,” she said, referring to her own well-to-do upbringing. “We’re always looking at how to increase prize money to lower-ranked players so it’s not all distributed to the top players, who are already making plenty of money.” But for players ranked outside the top 100, Pegula explained, “it’s impossible.”

“A lot of girls have a hard time trying to live on the tour, especially if they’re supporting their families, let alone trying to pay for coaching and get better at the same time,” she said. “It’s a very, very stressful situation.” The tenuous financial state of the WTA tour has made it even more so; China invested $500 million in women’s tennis in 2019, but the tour suspended operations in the country for 16 months after Chinese player Peng Shua i accused the country’s vice-premier of sexual assault and was later disappeared from public view, turning up only in state-sponsored media. Earlier this year, the WTA announced it would resume tournaments there this fall, but the tour has nevertheless been operating at a steep deficit, leading to murky flirtations with Saudi Arabian financing. The kingdom, of course, has recently flooded the international sports world with tremendous sums of money from its $700 billion sovereign wealth fund, financing the LIV, a professional golf league that successfully lured top players from the fledgling PGA. The two eventually merged last month. And last week, podcast host Craig Shapiro tweeted that the 2024 year-end WTA finals would be held in Riyadh . For some players, the potential inrush of Saudi Arabian financing has been deflating, considering the country’s criminalization of homosexuality and generally odious human-rights record.

Pegula took a less idealistic stance. “We’re going to have to weigh the pros and cons,” she told me. “It’s something that is the future. Regardless, it’s going to happen one way or the other. And we’ve just got to see if it’s really going to help our sport.”

For the time being, though, the late-summer hard-court swing of the tour has brought Pegula home to more familiar soil, where she appears to be rounding into form, with a legitimate chance to win her first Slam. Between the events in Washington,D.C., and Montreal, she said, something felt off. The change of balls threw her; her string tension wasn’t right. Then she won the tournament anyway. “Everything feels easier here, at least for me,” Pegula said. “Maybe just because I’m American.”

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Jessica Pegula is world’s richest tennis star, heiress to $4bn whose dad Terry outbid Trump to buy the Buffalo Bills

• Published : 8:00 ET, Jan 23 2023
• Updated : 9:43 ET, Jun 30 2023

THE heiress to a billionaire's fortune, tennis sensation Jessica Pegula needn't work for a living.

But the 29-year-old American star is the world No4 in singles and No3 in doubles.

So far she's earned an impressive $9.1million (£7.1m) in prize money - but that's just a drop in the ocean to what she stands to inherit.

Because she's the pretty daughter of Terry Pegula, once the 255th richest person, who made a $4billion (£3.23bn) fortune from natural gas development.

The self-made businessman owns NFL giants Buffalo Bills - who he bought in 2014 after outbidding Donald Trump and Bon Jovi, and various other sport franchises.

And if that's not enough, Jessica could also take her dad's $16m superyacht for a spin in her downtime.

Astonishingly, she is richer than the worth of retired icons Roger Federer , Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova COMBINED.

It would've been easy for Jessica to retire from tennis during tough years.

Plagued by persistent hip and knee injures, she truly considered it - before defying the odds with her climb up the WTA Tour rankings as well as teaming up for an impressive doubles pair with Coco Gauff.

Pegula is a three-time Australian Open quarter-finalist and she made the last eight at the French and US, but never beyond the third round Wimbledon.

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Jessica's biggest determination is to make a name for herself, and not just be Terry Pegula's daughter.

The star - who also launched skincare brand Ready24 - told Wide World of Sport : "When I was younger, it was more like I wanted to make a name for myself and then I realised as I got older, I should embrace the whole family aspect of it instead.

"It was almost hurting me in a way because it wasn't going to go away and I learned to embrace that, kind of have fun with it.

"Tennis is my thing, it's my job, it's my career. It's very separate and my parents don't really have any say right now in anything I do on the court."

HER DAD'S IN SPORT

Terry Pegula first worked at a petroleum engineer for Getty Oil, before setting up his own company called East Resources in 1983 with a $6,000 loan from his family.

He began by searching and drilling for oil, and later moved into natural gas.

In 2010, he sold assets to East Resources to Royal Dutch Shell for a staggering $3.8bn, and four years later the remaining assets were sold for $1.4bn to American Energy Partners, LP.

By that time, his sports group - Pegula Sports and Entertainment - was in business, with Terry's wife Kim installed as CEO and president.

Their biggest coup came in 2014 when they managed to beat rival bids from former US president Donald Trump and rock star Bon Jovi to buying NFL giants the Buffalo Bills for around $1.2bn .

PSE have also owned NHL franchise Buffalo Sabres since 2011, after paying $150m for the hockey team.

Aside from their sporting interests, not much is known about how the Pegula family, who keep their lives very private.

They live in a $2.8m gated five-bedroom mansion in Boca Raton, Florida.

Terry's also big on charity. He donated $83m for the building of Pegula Ice Arena at Penn State University.

And he gave Houghton College in New York $10m to fund the Kerr-Pegula Athletic Complex.

However, perhaps his most extravagant purchase was his stunning $16m superyacht called 'Top Five'.

Built by Christensen Shipyards in 2005, there's room on board for 12 guests in its six cabins.

Read More on The US Sun

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Although reports suggested Pegula was looking to sell it and is currently building a new, bigger yacht to replace it.

Perhaps it would make a nice hand-me-down for Jessica, should he fail to attract any buyers?

• Buffalo Bills

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Trying to keep it going here in Mexico 🇲🇽 pic.twitter.com/f66oBzmfYg — Jessie Pegula (@JPegula) November 1, 2023

WTA roundup: Jessica Pegula rallies in Adelaide

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Konstantin Koltsov, the Belarusian former pro ice hockey player and boyfriend of tennis player Aryna Sabalenka, has died at the age of 42, Russian club Salavat Yulaev said in a statement on Tuesday.

Alex Ovechkin nets pair to reach milestone as Caps top Flames

Alex Ovechkin scored twice and the visiting Washington Capitals rode a three-goal second period to a 5-2 victory over the Calgary Flames on Monday that lifted them into the Eastern Conference's second wild-card position.