"Last year kind of messed me up": Jessica Pegula hopes to adapt better to round robin format this year at WTA Finals

Jessica Pegula stated that she hopes for a better outcome at the 2023 WTA Finals compared to last year when she lost all her matches.

The American tennis player qualified for her first WTA Finals in 2022 but didn't exit the tournament the way she would have liked, losing all three of her singles matches and all three of her doubles matches, where she partnered with Coco Gauff.

This year, the world No. 5 will have another opportunity in both formats and spoke to the press, recalling her experience from last year:

“It’s definitely a lot different. I talked about it before, like last year kind of messed me up,”

“Usually when you lose, you want to get out of there, fly to the next week, get away from the site and the courts because you’re upset that you lost, right? You’re like, I just want to get out of here. Last year was weird. You lose, you’re still at the same place and you have to play again,” Pegula said

“Even though you have another chance, it’s hard to brush away, a loss because every year the format we play is you lose, and you go to the next city or you go home. I think mentally it was a lot different. I didn’t expect to not struggle with it, but I didn’t expect to think it would be difficult. Last year I felt like it was actually very difficult to have to lose a match and then come back and play the next day or two days later,” she added.

Jessica Pegula will be in a group with Aryna Sabalenka, Elena Rybakina, and Maria Sakkari, whom she will have to face to secure one of the two spots to advance to the semifinals. The American tennis player talked about the differences in the format compared to tournaments throughout the rest of the year:

“Hopefully I can mentally prepare better this time. It’s great that you still have a chance, especially with the tough competition we have here. All of us are the girls that have been playing the best all year, so it makes it really hard. Some days just go better than others,

“It’s just a different format, but I think it makes it exciting to see the different matchups. I think girls playing differently against different players, some play better, some player worse. It will be nice to see that you can see those matchups more often before someone being eliminated.”