She added: “It’s also fun to see this kind of crossover with Bills fans—even if I am far away, like in Qatar, I see people in the stands wearing Bills jerseys.”
In January last year, the Bills player Damar Hamlin went into cardiac arrest after a tackle, prompting global headlines. A few weeks later, at the Australian Open, Pegula wore Hamlin’s number, 3, as a patch on her skirt to show support. The gesture underscored Pegula’s unique position of being able to bridge an intrinsically American athletic bastion with a different, smaller—though global—sport.
Off the court, Pegula has a deep love of dogs (even if they’re not allowed to stay with her at the Four Seasons). Along with her husband, Taylor Gahagen, she co-runs A Lending Paw, a charity that supports rescuing dogs, as well as nurturing (and paying for) them to become service animals.
Of that project, Pegula said: “We wanted to help people afford service dogs. Not only is it about dogs helping people, it’s about people helping dogs, because we only work with rescues. It goes both ways.” Ahead of last year’s US Open, Pegula hosted an event at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center where A Lending Paw linked a newly trained dog with a veteran.
Pegula also recently relaunched her skincare line, Ready 24. “I like to say it’s adaptable skin care,” she said. “It’s for people on the go, not just athletes, and people that might want to mix their regimen with other products. It’s very basic. Growing up, I had horrible skin, and usually when I did less, my skin got better.” Ready 24 sells a cleanser, a mist and moisturizers, though Pegula said her holy grail is to develop an effective sunblock—something that’s trickier than it sounds. (It’s also a top concern for athletes in particular, who spend much of their time in the sun and who are often sweating.)
This all amounts to a rarefied American tennis story, which will see its biggest moment at the US Open’s women’s final on Saturday.
“If you would have told me in the beginning of the year that I would be in the final of the US Open, I would have, like, laughed, so hard, because that’s just where my head was at, not thinking I would be here,” said Pegula in Queens. “It’s a childhood dream; it’s what I wanted when I was a kid… my home country, my home slam… it’s perfect, really.”