Jessica Pegula romped to her second WTA 1000 title at the Canadian Open last Sunday but was empathetic towards Liudmila Samonova who played through a hectic schedule to reach the final.
The power-hitting Samsonova played her Round of 16 match on Friday afternoon after their match against Aryna Sabalenka was heavily impacted by Thursday's downpour in Montreal. Later during that day, she returned to the court to win her quarterfinal against Belinda Bencic.
Against Sabalenka, the Russian took close to three hours to secure a hard-fought victory and tallied another two hours to see off Bencic. Sadly for Samsonova, the situation became progressively worse on Saturday when another rain interruption forced her semifinal clash against Elena Rybakina to be pushed to Sunday.
She defeated Rybakina in three sets, and just a few hours later she was scheduled to play Pegula, who had 24 hours of rest time. Samsonova had nothing left in the tank. Speaking after the match, Pegula was unhappy that the final was not contested on a more fair ground but said the situation was beyond their control.
"Yeah, she's had a crazy schedule. She played two times I think Friday. Played a long match yesterday. Or sorry, the day before. Then got delayed today and then, whatever, had to play again. She's played a lot of matches in a really short amount of time. It's not ideal. There's nothing we could really do. It was just the weather."
Still, Pegula had words of encouragement for Samsonova, who is one the fastest-improving 24-year-olds on Tour and starts a new week at a career-high ranking of No. 12.
"I mean, regardless she had a great week and made the most of it, so I'm sure she's happy either way. But, yeah, just more or less kind of sucks when you have to play someone like that."
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