Jessica Pegula was beaten to the Miami Open title by Aryna Sabalenka after losing the final in straight sets.
Pegula particularly struggled on serve against Sabalenka, winning less than half of her points on first serve.
This allowed Sabalenka to break Pegula seven times during the match, as she won her biggest title so far this year in Miami.
After winning the Miami Open for the first time, Sabalenka received plaudits from Nick Kyrgios and many others.
Jessica Pegula notices a big change in Aryna Sabalenka’s game
After a tight first set between Pegula and Sabalenka, the world number one was able to run away with the match.
While the serve was a big topic of conversation, Pegula pinpointed some other areas of Sabalenka’s game that she was impressed by.
Pegula particularly highlighted Sabalenka’s consistency as something that has improved when speaking in her post-match press conference.
“Yeah, it’s tough with her,” said Pegula. “I mean, she’s hitting her forehand and her backhand really well, ripping the ball, changing the direction of the ball, being really aggressive. Every time that I thought she’d miss a couple shots or easy balls, you thought maybe it was going to go off and I had chances, she would just come back and hit three or four winners or three or four really good shots.
“You’d be, like, Oh, gosh, the forehand was going to break down or the backhand was going to break down, and it just never quite did, which is something, as her being the number one player in the world I think has gotten so much better is that when she doesn’t really have, like, bad swings anymore.
“When something goes off, it maybe goes off for a point or two and then it’s back. So I think that was something. Yeah, the serve, the second serve, I think I started mixing in a lot more kick serves, which I think helped, but it was kind of a little bit too late, felt like.
“I was winning some more free points, maybe wasn’t so much on the defensive. I think I caught her off-guard a little bit, which is something she did to me, as well, you know, kind of getting more of the first serve in and changing the pace of the serve.
“I wish maybe I would have done that a little bit earlier in the first set instead of maybe waiting till the end or waiting till I was down Love-30 or Love-40 in the game, maybe would have helped me put more pressure on her in those return games and take some pressure off of me not having to come back from Love-40 or something like that.”
Jessica Pegula admits regrets against Aryna Sabalenka in the Miami Open final
This is the third final that they have played against one another over the past year, with Sabalenka beating Pegula at the US Open and the Cincinnati Open.
Despite suggesting that Sabalenka has improved since then, Pegula also claimed that the matches all felt very similar and admitted that she wished she had done something earlier on in the Miami final.
“I mean, I feel like every match has been kind of the same,” said Pegula. “I don’t know if she’s better. I just meant for today we were both kind of struggling to hold and we were both in each other’s service games every time.
“I just thought that this match specifically she definitely went and kind of mixed up and went more, like, a hard slow kick, kind of went for more first-serve percentage, mixing up the paces on the serve a little bit.
“I think she maybe went to that sooner than I did and was able to get away with, you know, holding serve a few more times, especially in that first set, where in the second set I think I was trying to go for too much on my first serves.
“So I wish I would have mixed that up maybe a little bit sooner, but I didn’t and she just got into a rhythm I felt like on her returns where I wasn’t getting any free points or any easy second balls off my serve.”
Pegula will not spend much time dwelling on this final defeat, as she now heads to the Charleston Open as the top seed.
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