Last year, Jessica Pegula left the All-England Club heartbroken after a shock opening-round exit. This season, though, the Berlin Open heroics have pushed her firmly into the title conversation, with no set losses until the third round at Wimbledon. Yet, she had to weather a scare after dropping the first set today against Iva Jovic, but after the win, her feelings about the gritty battle remained unmistakably clear.

“That was very tough,” Pegula added in her post-match interview. “I know Iva [Jovic] is a great player. She flipped herself as a top player, has a lot of energy, and is very intense from the start.”

“I felt like I couldn’t find myself in the first set, but I kept telling myself that I wasn’t playing that bad. I was still breaking quite a bit, so I just needed to kind of find myself and figure it out. Iva is a very grass-court player, so I think it was great to get through a really hard match today against a very good player,” Pegula added.

After dropping the opening set, the 32-year-old looked like a completely different player from the second set. The shift was clear not only in the 6-3 scoreline, but also in the way she started to control the match.

The American’s first-serve points won jumped to above 80%, and that gave her a much firmer grip on the long rallies. The former world No. 3 was broken just once from that point on, the final break of the match, while she broke the 18-year-old 2 more times to take her total to 8.

As her level rose, the frustration that had shown earlier slowly disappeared. That momentum carried into the third set too as Pegula broke early to move 3-0 ahead, and it was no routine break either, as the current world No. 4 came back from 0-40 in Jovic’s service game and reeled off 5 straight points to steal it.

Jovic did manage an important hold at 3-1 in the last set, but the experienced American quickly shut the door again. The 4th seed American won another run of 3 games to become the first quarterfinalist at this year’s SW19 with a scoreline of 6-4, 6-3, 6-1.

Jessica Pegula to face Coco Gauff or Belinda Bencic in the SW19 quarterfinal

Jessica Pegula’s win sends the American into the elite 8 at the All-England Club for the first time since 2023 and also marks her second Grand Slam quarterfinal of this season.

The former doubles No. 1 will now wait to see who comes through the match between Coco Gauff and Belinda Bencic, who are scheduled to play on No. 1 Court today.

Her latest win over the fellow American also completed a surface trilogy between the two in 2026. In their previous 2 meetings, Pegula beat Jovic 6-4, 6-2 on the hard courts of Dubai.

She then followed that with another victory at the Charleston Open and later went on to win the title at both tournaments.

Now, against Coco, she holds an H2H record of 5-3, while against the former world No. 4, she has a modest 1-4 H2H record. Her last match against the former world No. 2 came at the WTA Finals last year, where Pegula won a tough three-set battle against Coco.

Against the former Olympic gold medalist, Pegula most recently faced her in the Indian Wells Open Round of 16, where the American came through in straight sets against Bencic. Now that she has reached the All-England Club quarterfinal, the big question is whether Pegula can push even deeper and fight her way into the semis.