Good News and Bad News for Pegula: A Comeback Win, but the Sponsor Activation Is On

The weirdest things can come into a professional tennis player’s mind at times. 

Jessica Pegula, a shrewd, focused competitor 99 percent of the time, was part of the one percent tonight during the first set of her 4-6, 6-2, 6-2 victory over Donna Vekic on Saturday night in Indian Wells. 

The No. 5 seed’s mind wandered a bit as she had trouble controlling the ball against the hard-hitting Croatian. 

“I was thinking about, ‘Wow, this would not be great if I lose.’ I was like, ‘Maybe I can get out of the sponsor thing I have to do tomorrow,’” she said. 

In the end Pegula pulled out of hyperspace and – as she so often does – won a three-set battle to set a third-round clash with Jelena Ostapenko (Pegula leads the head-to-head, 3-2). 

A problem-solver extraordinaire, Pegula has now won 14 of her last 17 matches, and she has prevailed in seven of the last 12 matches in which she has lost the opening set. 

“I think I’ve played so many matches and had some really good three-set matches lately where I also was pretty comfortable knowing that I could turn it around,” she said. 

Pegula said a tighter racquet tension helped her flip the script on No. 103-ranked Vekic.

“I think I kind of flipped the switch pretty quickly,” she said. “I switched, like the ball is kind of flying on me, so I switched to a tighter racquet. That kind of gave me a little bit more freedom to feel like I could go for my shots, and I think that kind of helped.

“I think I’m just comfortable in those situations. There’s always a little bit of panic, but at the same time, I have been dealing with those matches for a while, and maybe not as much panic as it used to be.”