Aryna Sabalenka and Jessica Pegula will battle for the US Open women’s title on Saturday, united by Grand Slam dreams overshadowed by personal heartache.
World number two Sabalenka, a two-time Australian Open winner, has reached the final in New York for the second year in a row after finishing runner-up behind Coco Gauff in 2023.
Pegula is in her first major final at the age of 30 after defeating number one seed Iga Swiatek in the quarterfinals and then making an amazing comeback to beat Karolina Muchova in the semifinals.
Sabalenka, who is from Belarus but lives in Florida, is playing her first Grand Slam final since the death of her ex-boyfriend in March.
Ice hockey player Konstantin Koltsov, once a star of the NHL, died by suicide at the age of 42.
Sabalenka described the death as an “unimaginable tragedy”.
“Even though we were no longer together, my heart is broken,” she wrote in a social media post.
Five years ago, Sabalenka’s father Sergiy died of meningitis at the age of only 43.
It was her father who introduced her to tennis at the age of six, when they began hitting balls on empty courts in Minsk.
“I’m just trying to fight because my dad wanted me to be No. 1,” she said at the time. “I’m doing it for him.”
She honored her father’s memory by becoming world number one in September last year. This season, she won her first Grand Slam title in Australia, finished second in New York and reached the semifinals at the French Open and Wimbledon.
There is much talk about the fact that Pegula is the daughter of oil moguls Terry and Kim Pegula, the billionaire owners of the NFL team Buffalo Bills and the NHL hockey team Buffalo Sabres.
However, the family’s luxurious lifestyle counted for little in June 2022, when Kim suffered cardiac arrest and suffered brain damage and memory loss.
– “I experienced it and loved it” –
“My mother loved to work. She did everything and our family constantly told her that she needed to slow down and take time for herself,” Pegula wrote in a moving first-person piece for Players Tribune in February 2023.
“She gave so much time and effort to everyone. She lived it and loved it, and everyone she met felt it. Now we’re coming to the realization that it’s all most likely over. That she won’t be able to be that person anymore.”
Pegula, who lost six times in the quarterfinals of a Grand Slam tournament before finally breaking into the US Open final, will enjoy the emotional support of the 24,000 spectators at Arthur Ashe Stadium on Saturday.
Sabalenka said she was ready after facing barely veiled criticism from the crowd during her semifinal victory over New York-born Emma Navarro.
“Last year was a very tough experience, a very tough lesson,” Sabalenka said of her loss in the 2023 final to Gauff, in which she gave away a one-set lead.
“Today I thought: No, no, no, Aryna, this will not happen again. You have to control your emotions. You have to focus on yourself.”
“There were people who supported me. I tried to focus on them.”
Sabalenka has a head-to-head record of 5-2 with Pegula and won their last meeting in the final in Cincinnati last month.
This loss was Pegula’s only one in the North American hard court season, and she has 15 wins in 16 matches.
With a win on Saturday, Sabalenka would be the first woman since Angelique Kerber in 2016 to win both Grand Slam hard court tournaments in the same season.
Pegula would be only the third woman in modern times, after Ann Jones (Wimbledon 1969) and Flavia Pennetta (US Open 2015), to win her first major title after her 30th birthday.
“If you had told me at the beginning of the year that I would be in the final of the US Open, I would have laughed out loud,” admitted Pegula, who missed the European clay court tour due to a back injury.
DJ/PB
