“I still got the chance here, but usually it’s tough to sleep after a tough loss like this,” she said with a wry smile in her post-match press conference. “We’ll have to get used to it and train tomorrow, and be ready for the next match.”
The Tunisian trailblazer had weeks in between her last two losses at the US Open and at home in Monastir, making 48 hours to reset against an optimistic Pegula an unenviable task—one that the self-anointed Minister of Happiness was loathe to entertain.
“I usually have more time, obviously, but I don’t know, this time I have to really put my thoughts in the right direction. Definitely put the anger that I have inside in the right direction. And yes, we are both in the same situation with Jess. So, I’m just gonna challenge myself and see how I’m gonna react in this one. Definitely a lot of pressure on both of us. I’m gonna do my best to really get my head focused now and focus on the win.”
In the meantime, Jabeur was in a place of coulda-shoulda-woulda, the worst possible mindset in a format where every game counts.
“I felt like I was I was doing great and control especially the first set. I played a lot of practice points with the different players and it felt really well. Maybe just a few points were missing. A few like, you know, a lot of ‘I should have done that before,’ you know? ‘I just should have did that, should have went for the return, a lot of break points.’ So, that doesn’t really help my mentality right now.”