OMNIUM BANQUE NATIONALE

August 11, 2023

Jessica Pegula

Press Conference

J. PEGULA/C. Gauff

6-2, 5-7, 7-5

THE MODERATOR: Never easy to play a friend and doubles partner, but what made the difference today against Coco?

JESSICA PEGULA: Yeah, always a tough match. We know each other's games so well, so we kind of know what we're going to do to each other, know what our goal is.

It's just kind of trying to execute it at the right times and as best as possible. So I think I was just able to do it a little bit better today.

THE MODERATOR: Questions, please.

Q. We looked up a stat. I don't know if you were aware of that probably that if you had played the doubles tonight, it would have been the first time ever that you played singles against her on the same day that you've played doubles. Is that something that you were aware of?

JESSICA PEGULA: I thought we played together in Eastbourne. Oh, no, it was different days? Interesting.

Yeah, I didn't know that was the first. To be honest, it's kind of funny because before, I mean, really Eastbourne we haven't really played each other that much.

So it's just kind of funny that now we're maybe more in each other's section of the draws or meeting each other in the draw.

Yeah, it's always a possibility, and we would have been fine playing either way. It was just kind of a long match and a late night. I think we would have had to have been -- whoever won was first on tomorrow, so that just kind of made the decision a little bit more difficult.

Yeah, that would have been I guess interesting. I thought we already did that in Eastbourne, so I don't know.

Q. Going back to the match itself, you started out at 4-Love. Did something happen in particular? Was that on your part? Her serve was maybe not as efficient? How do you assess that?

JESSICA PEGULA: Yeah, watching her play the last couple of weeks I feel like she's been coming out really, really fast and getting really good leads and being able to play freely.

So obviously it doesn't always go to plan, but I wanted to stay as tough as possible at the beginning of the first set just to not -- obviously no one ever wants to go -- of course, I would love to be at 4-0 every match that I start, but I just didn't want her to be able to free up and start serving really well and ripping and playing super aggressive.

So it worked out kind of perfectly today. I can't say that's always the case.

But yeah, I wanted to be very tough the first few games and, yeah, just keep that pressure on really early.