Tennis star Jessica Pegula has revealed she has been messaging Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin for inspiration during her Australian Open run.
Hamlin suffered a cardiac arrest during the Bills’ crucial regular season contest against the Cincinnati Bengals on January 3 and was rushed to the University of Cincinnati Hospital.
The match was quickly suspended with players clearly unable to continue while there was a tremendous outpouring of support for Hamlin and his family as news filtered through regarding the severity of his condition. Thankfully, Hamlin has made an incredible recovered and has now been discharged from hospital.
Pegula - the third seed in Melbourne - is the daughter of billionaire Bills owner Terry, who is listed as the 345th richest person in the world. She has been paying tribute to Hamlin throughout her run to the quarter-final, wearing a visible number three on her shorts.
Following shock defeats by World No.1 Iga Swiatek on Sunday and Ons Jabeur in the second round earlier this week, Pegula is the highest-ranked player left in the women’s draw at the Australian Open. She is into her third-straight quarter-final Down Under and hopes to finally reach the last four.
Pegula revealed she has been in contact with Hamlin to inspire her to new heights. “He’s recovered so quickly and so fast that it’s just taken a lot of weight off of the teams, the players, the sport, other players,” the two-time title winner told the WTA earlier in the week. “It’s just been a really amazing story.
“Any time I can kind of ride that amazing kind of story and feeling, I think it’s good to try to take that with you into your matches.”
Pegula defeated Jaqueline Cristian, Aliksandra Sasnovich, Marta Kostyuk, and 20th-seed Barbora Krejcikova en route to the quarter-finals. She has been the favourite in all her matches but was quick to heap praise on Hamlin for his part in supporting her.
“Definitely some part of it has inspired me a lot,” Pegula continued. “It’s cool. He’s wrote me a few times as well after I’ve won here. It’s just amazing. I think it just shows you that people’s lives are at stake.”
She added: “It’s so much bigger than sport. Sometimes we lose sight of that. Sometimes it’s not a tennis match. At the same time that can help you kind of play free and not get so stressed I think. I definitely have carried some of it with me, for sure.”
Pegula is a heiress to her family fortune valued at £5.8 billion. Her father Terry made his fortune in multiple ways, initially through natural gas development before owning multi-million sports franchises in the NFL’s Bills and the Buffalo Sabres of the NHL.
Hamlin’s Bills face the Cincinnati Bengals in the Divisional Round of the NFL playoffs on Sunday night.
