Two recent trends kept up for Coco Gauff and Jessica Pegula to start their respective campaigns at the National Bank Open, though each needed to navigate different challenges on Wednesday to get there.
For the second time in the span of a week, Pegula shook off a slow start to beat Poland’s Magdalena Frech 3-6, 6-3, 6-1 — having also beaten in her in three sets in Washington — while Gauff stayed perfect against fellow Americans in 2026 with a 6-2, 7-5 win over qualifier Kayla Day.
Pegula: “Mental battle” to beat same opponent in back-to-back weeks
Pegula’s win against Frech, she said, was a near-mirror of her second-round win against the Pole last week at the Mubadala DC Open, almost right down to the score.
In that 3-6, 6-3, 6-0 match, Pegula won the last seven games — and on Wednesday, she won eight of the last nine in a “very, very similar” 3-6, 6-3, 6-1 affair.
“It’s kind of nice knowing that you just played them last week, like there’s nothing new,” Pegula said afterwards. “But at the same time, I think her mindset probably going in is, she already had a match, I only had a day to kind of turn things around. I felt like the momentum maybe was a bit more in her favor in that sense.”
“I was just happy with the way I was able to mentally stay in there today,” she continued. “I do think it was more of a mental battle just for me figuring out what to do and not get too frustrated.
“Then obviously when it got pretty hot I think I was struggling a bit, getting a little bit tired, but was able to just kind of keep my focus and my emotions in check. She’s a tough opponent, makes you play a lot of balls, makes you have to really beat her, and competes very well.
“I think having to face an opponent like that back-to-back is never easy, especially with a quick turnaround this week.”
Gauf pushes past the wall for lucky number seven
Gauff is now 7-0 against compatriots this year, but her win against Day was just her second in straight sets. Gauff was largely comfortable en route to building a 6-2, 5-3 lead against a “tricky” left-hander, but couldn’t close the match on serve at that stage.
The two-time Grand Slam singles champion later confessed that “towards the end, [she] wasn’t physically feeling [her] best,” and owed it to a long training block at home in Florida after a semifinal loss to Karolina Muchova at Wimbledon.
“The goal is to peak at US Open, so I know maybe this first week I’m not going to be feeling like a hundred percent, because I did load like so much post-Wimbledon,” she said.
“But it’s kind of the normal kind of way we approach these swings is the goal is to physically peak for the Slam. So just getting through this match, and I feel like by tomorrow I’ll be good. I think it was just a long couple weeks for me of training.”