American tennis player Jessica Pegula lost the women’s singles final at the US Open on Saturday to Belarusian Aryana Sabalenka. Sabalenka won in straight sets, both times 7-5.

Pegula, as she had done throughout the tournament, fought back after falling behind. Sabalenka won the first set and then took a 3-0 lead in the second, but Pegula won the next four subsets to decide the match.

Sabalenka had won 11 straight matches and 22 of her last 23 sets going into the match. The 26-year-old from Belarus claimed her third Grand Slam title after winning the last two Australian Opens.

Pegula had won 15 of her last 16 matches, all on hard courts like those at Flushing Meadows. Her only loss in that period came against Sabalenka in the final of the Cincinnati Open last month. After a surprising run to the final, Pegula lost to Sabalenka again on the equipment.

Pegula, a 30-year-old from New York who is seeded sixth and is appearing in the first Grand Slam final of her career, was 0-6 in the quarterfinals of major matches until she knocked out No. 1 Iga Swiatek in that round on Wednesday.

The two players had completely different backgrounds and tennis upbringings.

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Aryna Sabalenka after a miss against Jessica Pegula (USA) in the women’s singles final on day thirteen of the 2024 US Open tennis tournament at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center. (Robert Deutsch-Imagn Images)

Pegula is upstate New York royalty. Her parents, Terry and Kim Pegula, own the NFL’s Buffalo Bills and the NHL’s Buffalo Sabres. The family has a net worth of over $7.5 billion.

In September 2021, Jessica Pegula appeared on the Bills Pod Squad podcast alongside her mother, where she credited her parents for part of her athletic success.

“Dad and I are like oil and water on the tennis court — it doesn’t mix well,” she said, laughing. “But he always pushed me to do better. Work hard, always work hard, you can always work better than someone else, all that kind of stuff. He’s very old-fashioned.”

She added that her mother has been helping her stay fit behind the scenes.

“You were more off-court, get healthy. Like the diet, the recovery, you know, the training and stuff like that.”

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Buffalo Bills owners Kim and Terry Pegula honor the family of Buffalo Bills forward Bob Kalsu, who was killed in the Vietnam War, before the game on November 27, 2016 at New Era Field in Orchard Park, New York. (Brett Carlsen/Getty Images)

Meanwhile, Sabalenka was born in the capital Minsk in Belarus. Her father, Sergey Sabalenka, was an ice hockey player in Belarus and inadvertently introduced her to tennis.

“One day my dad was driving me somewhere in the car, and on the way he saw tennis courts. So he took me to the courts. I really liked it and enjoyed it and that’s how it was. That’s how it started,” she said in an interview with TennisMajors.com in August.

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Jessica Pegula defeats Aryna Sabalenka in the women’s singles final on day 13 of the 2024 US Open tennis tournament at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center. Mandatory credit: (Robert Deutsch-Imagn Images)

Her father passed away in 2019 at the age of 43 and was unable to see her win her first Grand Slam titles at the Australian Open in 2023 and 2024. Still, the titles helped her fulfill her father’s dream.

“I lost my father four years ago,” she told reporters afterward. “We had one dream: that I would win a few Grand Slams before I was 25,” she said after winning this year’s Australian Open final against Zheng Qinwen.

Sabalenka won her first Grand Slam before the age of 25, at the 2023 Australian Open, and secured her second before her 26th birthday this year, as her birthday falls in May.

Sabalenka also lost her boyfriend this year, after Konstantin Koltsov, a Belarusian hockey player who spent time with the NHL’s Pittsburgh Penguins, committed suicide in March at age 42.

Sabalenka has now won her third Grand Slam title and hopes to win more at the Australian Open in January.

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