NEW YORK — “If I had the opportunity to run away before I walked on the court, I probably would have.”
Kim Clijsters talks about how she felt ahead of her first Grand Slam final at the French Open 23 years ago as she prepared to face Jennifer Capriati. Capriati won the Australian Open that year in what was also her first Grand Slam final.
On Saturday night, Jessica Pegula will fight back similar sentiments as she prepares to compete in her first final – at the US Open, in her home Grand Slam, against Aryna Sabalenka, who has already played in three major finals, winning two of them.
Clijsters only recently turned 18 and puts much of the fear she felt down to obscurity. Pegula, in tennis terms, is at the opposite end of the spectrum – at 30, she is the oldest first-time Grand Slam finalist since 33-year-old Flavia Pennetta, who beat compatriot Roberta Vinci to win the title in New York. 2015.
Kim Clijsters lost to Jennifer Capriati in her first Grand Slam final. She would win four majors in her career (Clive Brunskill/Allsport)
That can help Pegulan, it can hinder her – in any case, nothing can fully prepare a player for what it is like for a first major final.
“There are added nerves, added emotions that you’ve never experienced,” Clijsters said in an interview at Wimbledon.
“It’s the reason I lost my first four Slam finals. I couldn’t stand the pressure of seeing the trophy and thinking that this is something I’ve wanted all my life.”
Clijsters fell to Capriati, as she details, giving the American his second title of 2001.
There may not be a better player for Pegula to learn from in this regard. Clijsters retired from tennis in 2007, aged 23, burnt out by competition and suffering several injuries. When she returned to the sport, the scene of her greatest comeback triumph was the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center when she entered the 2009 US Open as an unseeded player and won the whole thing.
On Thursday night, Pegula was tight-lipped about how she would prepare for the biggest match of her life after defeating Karolina Muchova in a three-set semifinal that ignited a missed volley from Muchova, who would have gone 6-1, 3-0 up if she had. . Pegula, world No. 6, was cautious about whether or not she would tap players who have been in this position to ask for their advice.
“We’ll see who texts me tonight and tomorrow. Maybe if a good name comes up I can pick their brain a little.
“I might have just flown it.”
Although her opponent, Sabalenka, has been here before, she was nervous after losing the first set to Elena Rybakina in last year’s Australian Open final. Later, the Belarusian and current world No. 2 settled into the match before coming back to win in three sets. In comparison, Sabalenka looked in control in her first US Open final, as she won the first set 6-2 against Coco Gauff. Instead, she unraveled in the face of Gauff’s resilience and a 24,000-strong home crowd, surrendering a title she held in her grasp in another three-set final.
There are more nuanced symmetries between the two finalists as well. It took Sabalenka four tries to win a Grand Slam semi-final, while on Wednesday Pegula won her first major quarter-final after losing her first six.
After that kind of breakthrough win, a player often goes one of two ways. They are freed and able to play for free in the next match or a little less focused after the emotional low of finally achieving a goal.
Pegula trailed with the latter for the first set of her semi-final against Muchova, 24 hours after her landmark victory against world No. 1 Iga Swiatek.
In her on-court interview, Pegula said Muchova “made me look like a rookie, I was about to cry.”
GO DEEPER
Jessica Pegula defeats Karolina Muchova in thriller to reach US Open final
Later, she suggested that she was actually too relaxed before playing Muchova, meaning she missed some of the nervous tension she experienced before facing Swiatek.
“It was weird,” Pegula said. “I feel like before the match with Iga, I was a lot more nervous and today I was just, like, ‘whatever’.
“Maybe that was bad because I went out super flat. Clearly, I was a little too loose.”
Jessica Pegula reached her first Grand Slam final in the same tournament as her first Grand Slam semi-final (Getty Images)
It’s a fine balance to strike. Sabalenka often went too far in the other direction – in last year’s final against Gauff, she was clearly booed by the patriotic crowd. She looked similarly hurt towards the end of the second set in Thursday’s semi-final against Emma Navarro when she was broken before serving for the match.
How she deals with what will be a raucous pro-Pegula atmosphere on Saturday could be decisive, but she did so well against Navarro, going for the variety she has incorporated into her game in recent months to get over the line.
Sabalenka leads the head-to-head against Pegula 5-2 and when they met in Cincinnati a few weeks ago, Sabalenka was a straight-sets winner. She is also on a run of 11 straight match wins, dropping just one set in the process, and at Grand Slam level, Sabalenka has won 26 of her last 27 hard court matches.
This is also a surface that suits Pegula, as she indicated in a press conference earlier this week. She comes into the match having won 15 of her 16 matches during the summer hard-court swing. Sabalenka has the bigger weapons, so Pegula will have to use her athleticism to draw enough mistakes from her opponent and send her into the kind of mindset that can see her game unravel. She doesn’t let that happen as much now.
When the subject of her losing quarterfinal run was put to her, Pegula would often say that all she could do was keep putting herself in position to win them and that’s where Clijsters’ mind goes when remembering her Grand Slam history. The Belgian has won three US Open titles and four Grand Slams in total, despite all the nerves she felt before facing Capriati in Paris. The act of winning a major title ultimately represents, she feels, as much as any other aspect of tennis, whether that’s winning a final or just being there to play one.
Kim Clijsters won the 2009 US Open, four years after her first. She would go on to retain the title in 2010 (Emanuele Dunand/AFP via Getty Images)
“You can’t practice that on a practice court, it’s not like serving out. Or a comeback,” she said.
“The only thing that can help you deal with it better is experience and keep putting yourself in that position to get back here.”
Pegula can’t suddenly conjure up experience for matches like Saturday, but trusting that other opportunities will still present themselves even if she loses could help her take the pressure off. Clijsters ultimately believes that losing her first final was the best way things could have turned out. The consequences of victory, although joyful, would be too great to handle.
“I was almost too young for what that could mean,” she said.
“It would be too fast. It would have gone too fast and it would have been difficult to deal with many of the consequences that come with it.”
Can Pegula handle the moment? Can Sabalenka handle the crowd? Come Saturday, they, and the rest of the tennis world, will find out.
(Top photo: Fatih Aktas/Anadolu via Getty Images)
