Jessica Pegula finds tournament hotels ‘mentally draining’ – and she’ll be finding her own accommodations for Wimbledon.
The world No. 3 is the daughter of oil and gas mogul Terry Pegula, who is worth $7.6billion according to Forbes.
Terry and his wife Kim also bought the NFL’s Buffalo Bills in 2014.
And Pegula plans to find her own hotel in SW19 as she aims for her best finish at the tournament.
‘It’s such a big part of our lives, and as I’ve gotten older, a good hotel has become more of a priority,’ she said, via Tennis.com. ‘When you’re 20 and you’re just starting to travel, you’re not complaining that much: you’re more out there grinding and embracing life on tour. Once you hit 30 and kind of need a better pillow, that stuff honestly becomes really important!’
She later continued: ‘Oh my gosh, being away from everyone else is a massive thing for me… I just felt like, ‘I can’t do [player hotels] anymore!’
Jessica Pegula said that it is ‘mentally draining’ to stay at tournament hotels
The world No. 9 is the daughter of billionaires Terry and Kim Pegula. Terry is worth $7.6b
The world No. 3 is reached the quarterfinals of Wimbledon in 2023, and was a finalist at the US Open last year
‘When you’re staying at a tournament hotel, I feel like it’s so mentally draining. It’s not like anyone is a problem. But if you were going to work with someone, you wouldn’t necessarily want to eat breakfast with them, practice with them, be in the gym, have lunch, go to the locker room and the physio room with them, and then see them in all the elevators and the hallways.
‘I don’t think people realize that shouldn’t happen, not with the people you’re working and competing with every single week. We play pretty much every week together, and so, all of that together, you’re ready to lose it!’
Pegula added that she was in a ‘better mood’ when staying in a nice hotel, and she recently arranged her own accommodations for the French Open. In fairness, she’s certainly not the only player to do so.
The 31-year-old, whose father Terry sold most of his natural gas company for $4.7billion in 2010 according to Bloomberg, has previously taken aim at the opinions surrounding her family’s wealth.
‘It’s just kind of funny when people assume that I fly private everywhere, or that I have a chauffeur driving me around since I was five,’ she told the Daily Mail in an exclusive interview last summer. ‘I’m like, what? Or I have a butler… that’s not how it works.’
Pegula, left is seen with her family after her parents Terry (center) and Kim (right) bought the Buffalo Bills in 2014
Pegula stressed during the conversation that her family’s extreme wealth didn’t come until she was already a teenager.
‘People jump to these conclusions that are so over the top. I grew up pretty normal, and a lot of that [her family becoming billionaires] didn’t happen to me until I was already older and playing.
‘My goal since I was six or seven was to be number one in the world. So that was before a lot of this other stuff happened. I mean, before that, I was just a normal kid growing up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania , taking lessons after school. So I think that’s just the kind of difference that maybe the casual fan kind of doesn’t grasp as well.’
Pegula’s best finish at Wimbledon came in 2023, when she made the quarterfinals but suffered a painstaking loss to eventual tournament winner Marketa Vondrousova.
She reached the finals of the US Open last summer but has yet to capture a Grand Slam title.
