Jessica Pegula, the heiress to a £5billion fortune has crashed out of Wimbledon at the quarter-final stage.
Pegula was beaten in three sets by Marketa Vondrousova on Tuesday after reaching the last-eight having been ranked as the No.4 seed going into the tournament at SW19. She lost the first set 6-4 but rallied back in the second to win 6-2 and set up a third-set decider. However, that would go the way of Vondrousova, with Pegula losing 6-4 to exit the tournament.
The 29-year-old is yet to win her first grand slam title and her wait goes on after the loss to Vondrousova. Pegula has a best finish of the quarter-final in all four grand slams, which have come since 2021.
Pegula had previously beaten Lauren Davis, Cristina Busca, Elisabetta Cocciaretto and Lesia Tsurenko to set up the quarter-final clash. However, now the American will now turn her attentions to her home grand slam with the US Open at Flushing Meadows in September.
The prize money on offer for the winner of Wimbledon stands at £2.35m, but losing out on that shouldn't be too much of a concern to Pegula. The American is the daughter of Terrence Pegula, a businessman with a reported net worth of £5.2bn. Pegula is the heiress to her father’s fortune, which she stands to inherit. Terrence Pegula is listed as the 365th richest person in the world and made his fortune in the gas and oil industry.
He would later turn to sports ownership where he bought NFL outfit the Buffalo Bills in 2014. Terrence is also the owner of other sports teams in the Buffalo area, including the Sabres in the National Hockey League and the Bandits in the National Lacrosse League. To put Pegula’s inherited wealth, as well as her earnings from tennis, into context, the fortune from her father would see her become the richest sports star in the world. It would also be considerably more than NBA legend Michael Jordan.
The former Chicago Bulls star recently completed a sale of his majority stake in the Charlotte Hornets. Despite this, the six-time NBA champion is worth £1.5bn, which is more than three times less than what Pegula stands to inherit from her father.
Jordan’s legacy from his basketball career, combined with his annual earnings from sponsorships such as Nike, have seen him become one of the richest sports stars in the world. In June 2022, Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James became the first active player in NBA history to become a billionaire.
