Jessica Pegula holds onto sense of humor, embraces clay-court boot camp in Charleston

“Sometimes I’m talking to them,” Pegula admitted in her post-match press conference. “It’s hard to hear sometimes with the crowd, sometimes I’m kind of just saying things that they probably don’t hear, but then I’m talking to myself at the same time.

“I was a little frustrated at the end of the first set. Like my coach kind of told me, like, ‘Your attitude hasn’t been great,’ and I got kind of annoyed, and I was like, ‘Well, what do you expect it to be? Like I’ve been competing pretty well this week.’ And then I start rambling on to myself, like, ‘Are you fricking kidding me? Like, seriously? I think it’s been fine.’ Like it was kind of not great obviously once I lost the first set. Yeah, it’s hard.

“I feel like, for me, someone who doesn’t show a ton of emotion, there are times where I do feel like I have to let it out, and he claims he kind of did it on purpose. I don’t really know if that’s true, but he was like, ‘I did kind of want you to just like almost get mad at me a little bit just to, like, stop over-thinking all the other things that were happening in the match.’”

While her quarterfinal went the distance, Pegula enjoyed her most dominant finish of the week, winning the final six games against Shnaider to book a semifinal against either Iva Jovic or Anna Kalinskaya.