Tennis is such a global sport, but in U.S. they don't really know you unless you're Venus or Serena Williams, hopefully WTA can continue building that: Jessica Pegula
Although the WTA tour has many great players who are all capable of winning trophies, Jessica Pegula reckons most casual fans would not be aware of most of them.
Since tennis is a global sport that competes with several others, the American is of the opinion that a layman would only be familiar with very elite athletes like Venus Williams and Serena Williams.
Pegula was in line to reach her first Grand Slam semifinal at the French Open this year, but fell to World No. 1 Iga Swiatek in the quarterfinals.
On the hunt for history 🇵🇱
@iga_swiatek extends her winning streak to 3⃣3⃣ after beating Pegula 6-3 6-2 in the QFs 💪
📸#RolandGarros | @pzt_tenis https://t.co/z4Rje0hNhi
After the loss, the 28-year-old gave her thoughts on Roland Garros tournament director Amelie Mauresmo's recent comments on women's tennis' lack of appeal.
Mauresmo claimed that the reason most of the primetime night matches at the event were given to men this year was simply because it was what the viewers liked.
Like most players and fans, the World No. 11 did not agree with Mauresmo and noted at her press conference that the WTA tour had plenty of great players with personalities who deserved to be marketed as much as their male counterparts.
"Tennis is such a global sport and it's so big and there's so many other sports that sometimes in other countries, even in the U.S., like, they don't really know you, I mean, unless you're Venus or Serena Williams, like, they don't really know anyone else," Jessica Pegula said.
"Hopefully the WTA can continue building that and showing that there's so many [other] great players and so many personalities and so many girls that can pop in and win a tournament at any given time, which I think is more exciting than having the same people win all the time," she said.
Iga Swiatek called Mauresmo's comments "disappointing", before pointing out the appealing aspects of women's tennis.
"Some may say women's tennis is unpredictable & girls are not consistent. But it may also be something that is really appealing & it may attract more people." https://t.co/3RM6p4fZ3z
Jessica Pegula declared that the women's circuit was exciting because of its unpredictability. At the same time, the American proclaimed that having dominant players like Iga Swiatek and Ashleigh Barty was also good for the tour.
In a nutshell, Pegula was of the opinion that women's tennis had a lot of good qualities that made it extremely appealing to fans, contrary to Mauresmo's remarks.
"I think the depth is amazing. I think it's nice not having someone who wins all the time. But I will say, I'm sure it is probably good as well for someone like an Ashleigh Barty and someone like an Iga Swiatek, who are doing so well that it does kind of make a connection of people like, okay, that girl that's winning all its time, if you're not really a big tennis fan," Jessica Pegula said. "So I think that also is important."
"I feel like so many people love watching women's tennis because there's more drama" - Jessica Pegula
During the press conference, Jessica Pegula revealed that, personally, she thought more fans were interested in women's tennis because of how different it was from the men's matches.
The World No. 11 pointed out that there were very few big servers on the WTA tour, meaning that there was room for more rallies and more drama in the game.
"To me, I feel like so many people love watching women's tennis because, you know, we don't have huge serves. We're not acing," Jessica Pegula said. "There's not a lot of super, super quick points. There's more rallies. There's more drama."
Asked by @CWhitakerSport about only picking a women’s match once out of 10 times to be the “match of the day,” #RolandGarros tournament director Amelie Mauresmo searched for the word to say that women’s tennis is less appealing now.
Think this will land roughly in WTA circles… https://t.co/GgzJAL9pDI
Pegula hailed the WTA for doing a good job of propping up exciting players like Iga Swiatek and Ons Jabeur globally to increase their following.
"I think the WTA's trying to do a better job of putting out a better product there and trying to get fans more connected with the players individually because I think there's so many fun personalities, and you've seen that with even Iga or with Ons Jabeur who is a great personality and has such a great following," Jessica Pegula said.
As much as the 28-year-old appreciated the dominance shown by players like Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic on the men's side, she reckons the women's tour is interesting too, if for entirely different reasons.
"Not that I'm not a fan of the Big-3, and what they have done is amazing, but, yeah, I mean, I think it's exciting," Jessica Pegula said. "I'm hoping we can just connect more with the fans on that aspect."