World No. 3 Jessica Pegula Stunned In Biggest Upset Of This Year's Wimbledon

Jessica Pegula shockingly lost in the opening round of the 2025 Wimbledon Championships shortly after winning a title in Bad Homburg.

Pegula entered this year's Wimbledon Championships as one of the favorites. Although Wimbledon has historically been her worst Grand Slam, she came to London after winning a WTA 500 title in Bad Homburg, beating Iga Swiatek in the final.

That win in Bad Homburg put Pegula among the favorites, even though she made it past the third round at SW19 only once, in 2023. That year, the American player reached the quarter-finals, losing to the eventual champion Marketa Vondrousova.

This year, the WTA World No. 3 player was given a very favorable draw. She took on Elisabetta Cocciaretto in the first round of the tournament. Cocciaretto is ranked 116th in the world, and she is mostly known as a player who prefers clay courts and has not had any great results on the grass in the past. On top of that, before taking on Pegula, Cocciaretto never beat a player ranked in the Top 5.

But from the moment the first ball was hit on No. 2 Court at the All England Club, it looked like this could be Cocciaretto's match. The Italian broke her opponent's serve early in the match, leading 3-1 after confirming the break with a hold.

Despite being down in the opening set, at that point, there wasn't a reason for Pegula to panic. She was the overwhelming favorite and certainly possessed all the necessary tools to outplay her opponent.

When Cocciaretto added the second break and won the opening set of the match 6-2, even Pegula looked more stunned at what was happening on the court, knowing that she might need to find a quick solution to stop her opponent.

But the 2024 US Open champion just couldn't find any solutions, even in the second set. Despite easily holding her serve in the first three of her service games in the second set, Pegula suddenly got into trouble at 3-3.

She was broken, and when the American served to stay in the tournament at 2-6, 3-5, she didn't manage to find anything that would surprise her opponent, losing the match 2-6, 3-6.

After plenty of upsets on the men's side, with the likes of Holger Rune, Daniil Medvedev, and Stefanos Tsitsipas all losing, Pegula took care of the biggest upset not only on the women's side but of this year's Wimbledon as well.

After the top-seeded Aryna Sabalenka and the second-seeded Carlos Alcaraz got through their first-round matches, only losses of the second-seeded Coco Gauff or the top-seeded Jannik Sinner could top Pegula's shocking loss in terms of upsets.

On the bright side, Pegula can be almost sure to keep her World No. 3 ranking. She would lose it only if Iga Swiatek, Mirra Andreeva, or Qinwen Zheng won a title at Wimbledon.