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Выставил статью Бена Ротенберга

March 7, 2012, 2:30 pm

Teenager From Hockey Family Tries to Rise in Tennis Ranks

By BEN ROTHENBERG

INDIAN WELLS, Calif. — Jessica Pegula netted an easy swinging volley, then double-faulted on the next point to give back her double mini-break advantage in the second-set tie breaker. It seemed as though her window for an upset had blown shut.

But three points later, with her accurate serve and aggressive but high-percentage ground strokes, 18-year-old Jessica Pegula of Buffalo had completed her first career victory over a top 150 player, beating No. 119 Bojana Jovanovski of Serbia, 7-6 (4), 7-6 (5), on Monday.

Pegula backed up the upset Tuesday with an easier 6-2, 6-2 win over 120th-ranked Paula Ormaechea of Argentina, becoming the lowest-ranked woman to qualify for the main draw of the BNP Paribas Open, a premier W.T.A. tournament held just outside of Palm Springs.

Ranked No. 306 at the beginning of the week, Pegula qualified for the the main draw of a W.T.A. tournament for the first time, in one of the biggest tennis tournaments outside the Grand Slams. She will face Magdalena Rybarikova of Slovakia in the first round on Thursday.

While young athletes have come out of nowhere to break onto the highest stages of sports many times before, but perhaps none has ever come from quite as much as Pegula. Her father, Terrence, made his billions in natural gas drilling and is currently ranked No. 114 on the Forbes 400 list. He has since invested much of his money in hockey, funding a Division I programs at Penn State and, more significantly, buying the N.H.L.’s Buffalo Sabres in February 2011.

Jessica Pegula has trained some with other players at the United States Tennis Association’s player development facilities in Boca Raton, Fla., her family’s rare resources allow Jessica to eschew the full funding and coaching resources on which other rising players rely. Since February 2011, Pegula has been coached by Michael Joyce, a former A.T.P. player whose previous gig was a six-and-a-half-year tenure as the coach of Maria Sharapova. (Pegula happens to be in Sharapova’s quarter of the draw at Indian Wells.)

Joyce said working with him at this stage in her career was “probably a blessing” for Pegula.

“But it’s also tough, because she knows I’m not going to spend the time and effort to do it unless I feel like she can go somewhere,” he said.

Joyce added that the decision to work with Pegula was not made easily.

“No, it actually took me about six months to make up my mind,” he said. “Because we kind of did like a trial at first, and I saw I liked her game, I liked the way she played — most of the things she didn’t do well I felt as a coach I should be able to help her with.”

“I felt like the upside is really high for her,” he added. “She picks things up really fast, she listens, she works hard.”

“I felt like I could really help her. And so that makes it easy to get up in the morning and do my job.”

Pegula, who grew up in Buffalo, traveled with the Sabres to Europe for their season-opening games in Finland and Germany.

Joyce said that there were parallels to be found between what she and the athletes on her father’s team were going through.

“Obviously men are a lot different than women, and also it’s a team sport,” Joyce said. “But seeing that those players who are getting paid millions of dollars and who are at the top of the game, they’re going through their own struggles. And you start to realize that you’re not the only one who goes through tough losses, or injuries”

Pegula has a typical teenager’s tech-savvy, as evidenced by her posting on Twitter at 9:58 a.m. Monday morning, just two minutes before the scheduled start time of her match against Jovanovski.

Pegula admitted to pulling pranks on Joyce by conspiring with other friends to hack his Facebook account to upload funny pictures of her coach.

“I mean, that’s something I don’t think I should keep up,” Pegula said. “I was just — I wanted to stay relaxed.”

Pegula showed more restraint the morning before her final qualifying match, sending her last prematch tweet a full nine minutes before the scheduled start time.

Pegula joked that the transition to midmatch tweeting might not be far away.

“The next step: changeovers tweeting,” Pegula said with a smile. “Like tweet: ‘Hey ball kid, can you get me that water?’”  

 

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