American tennis star Jessica Pegula was on the wrong end of another major upset on Tuesday after suffering a shock first-round defeat against Italy’s Elisabetta Cocciaretto at Wimbledon.
The current world No 3, who was also sent packing at the French Open by world No 361 Lois Boisson last month, was beaten 6-2, 6-3 by the unseeded 24-year-old in less than an hour to continue her miserable 2025 at Grand Slams.
After making it to her first ever final at the US Open last year, Pegula, 31, was dumped out of the curtain-raising Australian Open in the third round, before slumping to defeat against Boisson in the fourth round of the French.
The surprise loss to Cocciaretto, who had never beaten a player ranked inside the top five before today, marks the nadir after her SW19 hopes went up in smoke in the very first round.
It also goes down as her worst Grand Slam showing for five years, since she was eliminated in the first round at the French Open in 2020.
She came into the All England Club having won the grass-court Bad Homburg Open in Germany over the weekend when she beat Iga Swiatek in straight sets.
Jessica Pegula crashed out of Wimbledon in the first round after a shock defeat on Tuesday
The daughter of billionaire NFL owner Terry Pegula is having a miserable 2025 at Grand Slams
Yet Pegula, who is the daughter of billionaire NFL owner Terry Pegula, will now go back to the drawing board and look to get back in form ahead of the US Open, which gets underway at the end of August.
The New Yorker made it to her first ever final in 2024, where she suffered a straight-sets loss to then-world No 2 Aryna Sabalenka.
Before her stunning defeat to Cocciaretto, Pegula admitted she finds tournament hotels ‘mentally draining’ and that she would be booking her own accommodation for Wimbledon.
Her father Terry, who is an oil and gas mogul, is worth $7.6billion according to Forbes. Terry and his wife Kim also bought the NFL’s Buffalo Bills in 2014.
‘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!
Pegula lost 6-2, 6-3 against unseeded 24-year-old Elisabetta Cocciaretto in less than an hour
‘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.
