Jessica Pegula began her professional tennis journey with a head start on most of her peers. In a sport as prohibitively expensive as elite tennis, her family wealth – her billionaire parents own several sports franchises, including the NFL’s Buffalo Bills – afforded her unfettered access to equipment and knowledge. Her career, however, has come to signify something else altogether.
At the age of 22, Pegula was still fluttering in and out of the top 150, stuck on the lower rungs of the ITF circuit and simply trying to figure things out. Pegula did not break into the top 100 until a couple of weeks before her 25th birthday in February 2019 and even then it seemed as if she was light years away from ever becoming a top player. She failed countless times before she began to soar.
