Jessica Pegula has confessed that watching Jannik Sinner blow three championship points in the Roland Garros final made her feel better about her own defeat. The third seed was stunned by French wildcard and then-world No.361 Lois Boisson in the fourth round.
A few days later, Carlos Alcaraz stormed back to beat Sinner in a thrilling five-set epic in the men's championship match. And Pegula said the Italian world No.1's defeat was "a million times worse" than hers.
The whole tennis world has been talking about Alcaraz's epic 4-6 6-7(4) 6-4 7-6(3) 7-6(2) comeback victory over Sinner in the French Open final. The world No. 1 had three championship points in the fourth set and even served for the title, but failed to capture his fourth Grand Slam trophy, and Alcaraz defended his title in Paris.
While she didn't tune in for the whole five-and-a-half-hour contest, Pegula was keeping an eye on the match, and admitted it gave her some perspective after bowing out to Boisson in the round of 16.
"I was at home and I didn't really turn it on until somewhere in between the five and a half hours. I turned it on and obviously I thought Jannik was gonna win, and then it just flipped," she said at Wimbledon on Sunday.
"It was crazy. I can't believe that Carlos was able to save match points and come back. I think I was thinking, like, I was pretty upset after my loss to Boisson, like, just tough match, wanted to make another quarter-final and all that. And then to see him lose like that, just that was clearly a million times worse and it honestly made me feel a little bit better.

"I was like, it's all about perspective right there because watching that happen, you obviously felt for him a lot, and then on the flip side seeing Carlos being able to deal with all of that and come out and win and you're thinking to yourself that tennis is really hard. So it actually kind of motivated me a little bit more that my loss wasn't so bad."
Pegula is now hoping she can have a better run at Wimbledon after lifting her ninth career title at Bad Homburg on Saturday. But the American believes the draw is wide open after seeing Barbora Krejcikova, Marketa Vondrousova and Elena Rybakina claim the trophy in recent years.
She explained: "It's a tricky surface, and honestly, I feel like it's, not lucky, but it's kind of like there's a lot of weird points and weird momentum swings. If someone is serving really, really well, sometimes there's not much you can do. Sometimes it's one let cord over the net, you get the break and the person wins the match.
"The men have three out of five [sets], so maybe you don't see that because there's a wider span of someone having to play really well to beat a top player, but for the women it's only two out of three."
Pegula also can't think of a WTA player who has emerged as a dominant force on the grass.
"It does seem like one of the more open Slams. Aryna [Sabalenka] has shown she's definitely very dominant on the hard courts. I mean, clay too, but hard courts. And then you have Iga [Swiatek] and Coco [Gauff] that are really good on the clay," she added.
"I don't know if there's one player that is is known for being a grass court player, maybe an Ons [Jabeur] or someone like that. I mean, even Marketa said she didn't even think she could play on grass until she won here. So it's tricky, it's tough.
"It's one of those tricky surfaces you really have to find out how to play on it, and it's just such a short season. I don't think we really have someone like that, on the men's side you had [Roger] Federer and whatever. But to me, it feels kind of still open, to be honest. It's felt like that for the last few years."
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