Taylor Fritz offered a candid glimpse into the mindset of tennis' elite when he spoke about what it’s like to reach the latter stages of a Grand Slam. For players like Novak Djokovic, he said, the quarterfinals aren’t a milestone-they’re just another day at the office.
“To someone like Novak, the quarterfinals is the same. It holds the same weight as the second round, the third round, whatever,” Fritz explained.
“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.”
That kind of perspective doesn’t come overnight. It’s earned, battle by battle, over years of deep tournament runs and the emotional highs and lows that come with them. For American star Jessica Pegula, the road to that emotional detachment has been anything but smooth.
Her sixth-and perhaps most gut-wrenching-quarterfinal exit came at Wimbledon in 2023. Pegula had a firm grip on the match against Marketa Vondrousova, leading 4-1 in the deciding set and holding a break point to go up 5-1.
Then came the rain. When play resumed under the roof, the momentum had vanished.
Vondrousova stormed back, rattling off five straight games to snatch the win. She didn’t stop there-she went on to win the whole tournament.
That kind of loss leaves a mark. Pegula acknowledged afterward that repeated quarterfinal exits can chip away at your confidence.
It’s easy to start focusing on what’s going wrong rather than what’s getting you back to that stage time and time again. Still, she kept reminding herself of the bigger picture: she was consistently putting herself in position to contend.
When asked if there was a missing piece to her Grand Slam puzzle, Pegula didn’t offer a tidy solution. “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.”
And that’s the truth of it. In tennis, there’s no magic formula, no guaranteed breakthrough moment.
Success at the highest level is often about persistence, resilience, and learning to treat the biggest stages like just another match-something the greats like Djokovic have mastered. For Pegula, the pieces might not have locked into place just yet, but she’s still right there at the table, putting the puzzle together one match at a time.