The Buffalo Sabres heiress Jessica Pegula did not reach the semifinals, her compatriot Navarro is a first-time WTA tournament winner

Twenty-nine-year-old American Jessica Pegula did not play her semi-final match against Russian Daria Kasatkina in the WTA tour event in Adelaide. It happened just two days before the start of the Australian Open!

Pegula is the co-favourite for the first Grand Slam of the season. Last year at the Australian Open, she reached the quarterfinals of singles and the semifinals of doubles. Jessica Pegula was also the world number one for three weeks last year with compatriot Coco Gauf and this year the winner of four WTA singles tournaments and four WTA doubles titles is aiming high.

What actually happened to Pegula?

A doctor had to be called to her because of stomach problems. He completely ruled out Pegula’s participation in the semifinals of the Adelaide event, which is the traditional preparation for the first Grand Slam of the season. Meanwhile, Pegula certainly has very good health care and diet, as she has earned over twelve million US dollars from tennis and her parents are extremely wealthy.

She even owns the Buffalo Sabres hockey club playing in the NHL and the Buffalo Bills, an American football club starting in the NFL. Pegula is the rightful heir to these clubs and her future is secure even without tennis. But she is now thinking about getting her health back in order to play in a Grand Slam tournament, after all, she was already world number three in singles.

Who made it to the final?

Another experienced player made it to the final in Adelaide, twenty-six-year-old Darya Kasatkina from Togliatti, who has earned over eight million dollars from tennis and publicly admitted her homosexual orientation when she admitted her relationship with Russian figure skater Natalia Zabiyakova.

The other finalist in Adelaide will be Jelena Ostapenko of Latvia. The native of Riga, who now lives in Los Angeles, has earned more than 13 million US dollars from tennis and in the semi-finals she beat Russia’s Elena Alexandrova, who lives and trains in Prague.

The Habart tournament also has one very surprising finalist, namely the twenty-two year old American Emma Navarro, a native of Los Angeles, currently living in Charleston, for whom this will be her first final on the WTA circuit.

After a battle in the semi-finals, Navarro took down another big surprise of the tournament, twenty-five-year-old Chinese Yue Yuan, who made it through to the semi-finals from the qualifying round. The other “Hobart finalist” is not so surprising as she has already won this tournament twice.

Twenty-eight-year-old Belgian Emma Martens from Louvain has won seven WTA singles titles and 18 doubles titles, won the Tournament of Champions the year before last, has already been in the semi-finals of the singles and will win the doubles at the Australian Open in 2021. In the semi-finals in Hobart, she took on the home Australian – twenty-nine-year-old Daria Savilleva.

UPDATE:

In Adelaide, there was nothing revolutionary, and Latvia’s Ostapenko beat Russia’s Kasatkina in two sets in the final. In Hobart, American Emma Navarro not only reached her first final, but also her first WTA tournament victory, defeating the experienced Belgian Mertens in three sets.

Source: WTA