Pegula recounts the drama of her mother

Jessica Pegula is 28 years old, she is number 4 in the WTA world and in the last 2 years she has been experiencing the best moment of her career. Her family is multibillionaires, owns NFL teams (the Buffalo Bills) and NHL (the Buffalo Sabers), and has always supported her in difficult times and rejoiced with her in her victories. Yet Jessica has been experiencing a drama for 8 months, one of the worst that a person has to face: the illness of her mother, Kim, head of Pegula Sports and Entertainment, who suffered a heart attack. She revealed it herself in a touching letter to “The Players Tribune”, recounting an ordeal that is not over yet and which has exhausted her physically and mentally.

The story

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A drama that overshadows his successes, tennis, and that trivially reminds us how money and victories are only part of life. “This is a story about my mother, my family and the last year we lived – writes Jessica with an open heart -. In June of 2022, I had just returned to Florida from the French Open. I reached the quarterfinals in singles and the final in doubles. It’s been an incredible two weeks, full of positives, including entering the Top 10 in the world. A few days after I returned home, I received a call around midnight (my mother’s birthday) from my sister Kelly, who was staying at my parents’ house. The mother had a problem and they were taking her to the hospital by ambulance, urgently. She was sleeping when my father woke up to find that she had gone into cardiac arrest and was unconscious – says the tennis player-. My sister gave her CPR until the ambulance arrived. You saved her life. Today my mother is still in recovery and she is getting better day by day. You are dealing with significant expressive aphasia and significant memory problems. She can read, write and understand well enough, but she has trouble finding the words to respond.”

The future

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Le Pegula also questions his future in tennis, his life in general. “My mom always wanted me to work hard, learn and eventually do what she did. She always told me to wait until I finished my tennis career. I always asked her to give me more responsibility, to get more involved, because I wanted to help. So now here I am, with my family, caught up in discussions about his treatments, legal guardians, doctors, therapy and what seemed the least important, my tennis career – writes Pegula – Suddenly, your world turns upside down and you have no idea what’s going on. Suddenly, I went from ‘Let’s celebrate top 10 ranking’ to ‘I have to start thinking about my career after tennis much sooner than I thought'”.