Last Updated on August 9, 2022
Jessica Pegula is a professional American Female tennis player who has been on top of her game for about three years. She started playing tennis at the age of 8 and lived quite a private life with very little details known about her.
Nevertheless, Jessica was born in New York on the 24th of February 1994 (28) to the family of Terry and Kim Pegula. Her parent was of different nationalities since her mother is Korean and her father is an American. Terry and Kim are successful business personalities and owned the Buffalo Bills Football Team, which plays in the American National Football League (NFL), and the Buffalo Sabres, which plays in the American National Hockey League.
As stated earlier, little is known about Jessica’s journey into tennis except that she started playing at a tender age and made her professional debut in 2011 at 17 in the US Open Doubles tournament alongside Taylor Townsend.
She was not quite a shocker until recently when she appointed a new coach and won her first and only Singles title, followed by 2 Doubles titles under his watch. She also has one WTA Challenger Doubles title and seven ITF Doubles titles in her title collection.
Jessica is a right-handed player who plays with a two-handed backhand technique and is 170 cm tall (5 ft 7 inches). She performed better on hard surfaces than on clay surfaces and won her major titles on hard surfaces, significantly the Qatar Open Doubles, where she partnered with Coco Gauff.
Who Is Jessica’s Current Coach?
The current coach of Jessica Pegula is David Witt. He has massively impacted her game and supercharged her into the World’s Top 10 and 12th in the Doubles category (currently sitting at number 7) since he took charge of her in 2019.
David has always been a top coach in the game and was also a former professional American tennis player, although he failed to make a name for himself as a player.
On the other hand, he had a blissful junior career, leading him to win the national championship and two challengers’ titles.
He was, however, well-known for his tenure as the hitting partner of Williams’s sisters and coach of the eldest of the two, Venus Williams. He was approached by the sisters while working as a resident pro at a local club in Jacksonville in 2002. His relationship with the sisters was very successful, especially with seven times Grand Slam winner Venus Williams.
Nonetheless, Venus ended their 11-year relationship as a coach and trainee for unknown reasons. This decision surprised the American coach as he claimed they had no issues. He still awaits a justifiable explanation for the decision, which he felt was almost undeserving.
Speculations have it that this could be due to some consecutive defeats Venus had during the period, and she felt the need to move on and try something new.
In 2019, David began working with Jessica and soon began to develop her into one of the best tennis players in America, with several wins in different tournaments.
She won her first WTA title immediately after he took over at the Washington Open, where she defeated Camila Giorgi in the finals. Since then, the tennis star has not won any other final but has improved significantly and spiked the rankings.
Describing his relationship with Jessica, David was quoted as follows:
“She worked so hard, and we clicked right away and got along, which helps. We had fun working on some new things. She started off winning Washington, which I was so happy for her”.
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This comment shows a strong relationship between the two; we hope they can maintain the relationship for long and achieve more feats together.
Another significant achievement Jessica had from working with David was making her World Team Tennis debut in 2020, playing in The Greenbrier. During the tournament, she represented as one of the players of Orlando Storm after Danielle Collins was dismissed from the team.
Jessica participated in the tournament’s three categories: Singles, Doubles, and Mixed Doubles. She was crucial in ensuring the team reached the semi-finals, where they lost to the Chicago Smash.
Who Are Jessica’s Previous Coaches?
There is no record of who were previous coaches of Jessica before David as she didn’t publicize her training pattern or discuss anything about her fitness routine. However, this should not come as a surprise as her playing pattern was quite uncoordinated during the early years of her professional career, and she was sitting outside the top 125 on the World’s Ranking.
However, since she came from a wealthy home, the best guess is that she might have had personal trainers taking care of her development since she was 8. The presence of good trainers might have exposed her to new ideas and sped up her growth rate.
Jessica Pegula’s achievements with different coaches
We have collected in the table the data about the trophies won by Jessica Pegula under the guidance of various coaches.
Coaches | Years of Completion | Titles |
David Witt | 2019- till date | 2019 Washington Open, USA 2022 Qatar Open (Doubles) |
Conclusion
Jessica Pegula is one of the fastest growing tennis players considering the rate she broke into the World’s top 10. And this was a player struggling to make it to the World’s best 100 three years ago; now, she is sitting comfortably in number 7.
This shows the significance of her coach, David, and how much experience he brought her from working with Serena and Venus Williams, who have established a name for themselves in the game.