Fritz went on to say,:“To someone like Novak, the quarterfinals is the same. It holds the same weight as the second round, the third round, whatever. It’s just common—you’re used to it. Before, being in the quarterfinals was like a ‘Wow! I’m in the quarterfinals’ moment. But after a while, being deep in a Slam becomes more of a dull feeling, so you can just treat it much more like any other match.”
Pegula’s sixth—and most painful—quarterfinal letdown occurred at Wimbledon in 2023. She lost to Marketa Vondrousova after leading 4-1 in the third set, with a break point to go up 5-1, when rain interrupted play. When the match resumed under the roof, Vondrousova ran off five games on the trot to win. She would go on to claim all the marbles.
Pegula admitted afterward that after losing a few quarterfinals, it was easy to lose faith, to focus on the negative. Through her failures she kept reminding herself that she was putting herself into “good positions.” When a reporter asked Pegula if there was a piece of “the jigsaw” missing, she replied: “There’s not, like, a clear answer for everything, or something to make me say, ‘Now, if I do this, for sure I’m going to win a Grand Slam, make the semis, make finals.’ There’s nothing like that.”
She didn’t need to say that if there were clear answers, it wouldn’t be called a hex.
