No. 4 seed Jessica Pegula pulled off a comeback from 6-1, 3-1 down to keep up her excellent file in opposition to No. 2 seed Amanda Anisimova, advancing to the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships remaining 1-6, 6-4, 6-3 in 2 hours and a pair of minutes.
Dubai: Scores | Draws | Order of play
Pegula now leads her head-to-head in opposition to Anisimova 5-0, backing up her wins within the 2020 Western & Southern Open second spherical, 2024 Charleston second spherical, 2024 Toronto remaining and final month’s Australian Open quarterfinals. Three of Pegula’s 5 wins have are available in three units.
The 31-year-old Pegula booked her spot in her twenty first profession remaining on the WTA Tour Driven by Mercedes-Benz, and tenth on the 1000 stage or above. She is a three-time WTA 1000 champion (Guadalajara 2022, Montreal 2023 and Toronto 2024), a four-time WTA 1000 runner-up (Madrid 2022, Cincinnati 2024, Miami 2025, Wuhan 2025), and was additionally a finalist on the 2023 WTA Finals Cancun and 2024 US Open.
Pegula will face No. 7 seed Elina Svitolina as she bids to carry the Dubai trophy for the primary time. Pegula leads her head-to-head file in opposition to in opposition to Svitolina 5-3 (together with 5-2 on outside laborious courts).
How did Pegula pull off the comeback?
Pegula can often be relied upon for concise and correct match evaluation as quickly as her on-court interviews. This time, even she appeared mystified.
“At the start of the third, it was 1-1,” she stated. “I simply checked out my coach and I used to be like, ‘I’m simply comfortable I’m nonetheless even right here proper now.’ She was taking part in some unbelievable tennis, and I simply got here out a bit of gradual. And if you come out gradual in opposition to Amanda, she will actually simply wipe you off the courtroom, which is what she was doing.
“I held on to my serve there in the second set. I just kept telling myself that. I had some break points in the first set, even though it was convincingly the other way, and I knew I could get some break points back. That’s really all I was focusing on.”
Indeed, there was no single, dramatic turning level. Pegula clawed her method again into the match step by step — it was the work of the entire set, sport by sport. To break it down additional, listed here are the important thing moments:
- At 6-1, 2-0, Anisimova appeared at her most invincible when she lasered a backhand go — arguably her finest shot of the match — to carry break level for a 3-0 lead. But she did not get her return into play, and on the following level netted a forehand sitter off a poor Pegula drop shot. Pegula escaped with the maintain;
- Anisimova appeared to have averted a turning level when she held for 3-1 from 0-40 down, placing clear winners on two of the three break factors. But as Pegula alluded, it was indicative of her rising skill to get a foothold in Anisimova’s service video games;
- Pegula’s breakthrough got here when Anisimova threw in one other error-strewn service sport at 3-2 up — however Anisimova redoubled her aggressive efforts in a three-deuce mini-tussle within the subsequent sport, discovering a heavy backhand on her fourth break level to take a 4-3 lead.
Even although Pegula hadn’t totally turned the scoreboard in her favour at this level, her ways have been starting to wrest the match away from Anisimova’s first-strike territory. Pegula was starting to attract overhead errors with sky-high defensive lobs, and disrupt Anisimova’s timing with defensive slices. She levelled once more at 4-4 — and this time, ran away with the momentum. From 4-3 down, Pegula received seven of the following eight video games to go up 4-1 within the third set.
“I was running a lot,” Pegula stated in her press convention. “I knew I had to make use of my legs, get my ft below me … get my ft below and keep within the factors as a result of she was hitting a very huge ball. I used to be simply having bother, like, beginning the factors.
“I had to really make it a little physical there for a while. Then obviously at the end when I gained that momentum, it felt like there was a little bit of a lull in the energy where she was maybe, I don’t know, a little tired. It was definitely mental and physical at the end.”
The finish outcome was a turnaround in Anisimova’s fortunes — simply 24 hours earlier, she had pulled off a comeback of her personal, defeating Mirra Andreeva 2-5, 7-5, 7-6(4) from 6-2, 2-0 down.
How did Pegula clarify her dominance within the head-to-head?
Pegula modestly claimed bafflement on this entrance, too.
“It’s a really tough matchup,” she stated. “It’s not like we have easy matches. We have battles every single time.”
But her pundit’s hat quickly got here out, and her evaluation was once more on level.
“I do think that I’m able to take some time away from her,” she stated. “I’m able to hit a low, flat ball, and not let her set up and go for her big shots, which is what she’s good at. I try to utilize that the best I can and then mix in some variety, change things up. We had a lot of cat-and-mouse points, and they mostly went my way. So that was good.”
And even when Pegula is not taking it as a right, her excellent historical past in opposition to Anisimova is a reminder that, even when the scoreline’s in opposition to her, she’s by no means out of the match.
“I’m sure it helps me,” she stated in her press convention. “I’m unsure what she’s fascinated about. I believe I do know that I can flip matches round.
“I know what I can do to kind of bother her game. I just felt like I couldn’t quite get into that yet as the first set went. I feel like I just need to get to that part where I’m starting to bother her with my strategy and what I’m doing. She was doing a very good job of not letting me get there … Once I dug in, maybe she lost her timing a little bit, I was able to take my opportunity to do what I know probably bothers her.”
