What Happened to Jessica Pegula's Mom?

Jessica Pegula is the daughter of billionaires Terry and Kim Pegula. She is an American tennis player and a former World No. 3 in the WTA singles. So far, Pegula has bagged six singles titles and seven doubles titles on the WTA Tour, one WTA Challenger doubles title, and seven ITF doubles titles. She presently holds a WTA ranking of No. 7 in singles; in doubles, her career-high is No.1, and she is ranked No. 48 as of late 2024.

The American Pegula ended last season on strong notes, which includes reaching the career-high ranking of World No. 1 in doubles. She, along with her doubles partner Coco Gauff, qualified for the 2023 WTA Finals. She has qualified for the tournament as a pair and also individually, thus becoming the first player to qualify in both categories in back-to-back years since Sara Errani in 2012-13.

Jessica Pegula finished runner-up at the tournament after losing to World No. 1 Iga Swiatek. She became the first woman player in the Open Era to play the No. 1, No. 2, No. 3 and No. 4 player in the same tournament. After suffering from a neck injury, Pegula made a comeback at the 2024 San Diego Open, where she was a semifinalist in the singles category and a finalist in the doubles category along with Desirae Krawczyk.

Her Grand Slam accomplishments include reaching the quarterfinals of all four Grand Slam tournaments in singles category six-time. It includes reaching the quarter-final of the Australian Open thrice, French Open (2022), Wimbledon (2023) and US Open (2022) once in her career. She finished as a finalist in the doubles category at the 2022 French Open. She reached her first Grand Slam final in singles at the 2024 US Open, losing to Aryna Sabalenka in the final.

One of the most striking features of Jessica Pegula's game is her down-the-line backhand and forehand - one of the best on either circuit. The 30-year-old has a phenomenal range of groundstrokes, and dictates play from the baseline. Interestingly, "JP" is of Korean descent too, since her mother was born in Seoul.

Jessica Pegula Personal Setback

Jessica Pegula’s mother - Kim Pegula, suffered a cardiac arrest in 2022.

In February 2023, American Professional tennis player Jessica Pegula revealed in an essay for The Players’ Tribune that her mother Kim Pegula had suffered a cardiac arrest in June 2022. In her essay, she gave a detailed explanation of the event that unfolded on the night of her mom’s birthday, and how it left her family completely shaken.

Pegula revealed that she received a call from her sister days after flying back to Florida at midnight (on her mom’s birthday), revealing that her mom was on the way to the hospital as she suffered a cardiac arrest while in her sleep. The 2023 US Open mixed doubles finalist jotted down, “My mom was asleep when my dad woke up to her going into cardiac arrest and she was unresponsive for quite a while.”

Presently, Kim Pegula is back home and is still recovering. According to Pegula recently, her mom was still dealing with language and memory issues. While explaining her mom’s situation, Jessica Pegula wrote in her essay, “She is dealing with significant expressive aphasia and significant memory issues.

She can read, write, and understand pretty well, but she has trouble finding the words to respond to. It is hard to deal with and it takes a lot of patience to communicate with her, but I thank God every day that we can still communicate with her at all. The doctors continue to be blown away by her recovery, considering where she started, and her determination is the driving force of that.”

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Who Helped Save Jessica Pegula’s Mother Kim Pegula?

In her essay for The Players Tribune, Jessica Pegula revealed that her sister Kelly Pegula is the one who saved her mother Kim Pegula. Pegula explained in her essay that, while Kim Pegula was being unresponsive as her family member waited for the ambulance to arrive, her sister Kim constantly gave her CPR and saved their mother’s life. Her sister was staying with their parents.

Jessica Pegula wrote, “ My sister gave her CPR until the ambulance arrived. She saved her life. Even though she doesn’t like to take credit for this terrible situation, she absolutely saved her life, followed by the critical job performed by the paramedics who arrived and were able to restore a heartbeat.”

Pegula also wrote that three months before the crisis, her sister had done a CPR certification. A paragraph from the essay read, “Now, rewind to about three months before that. Kelly called me one day and said she was going to get her CPR certification as a requirement for a job she wanted. I said, “No way, I have been meaning to do that but haven’t gotten around to it.”

She relayed to me how nervous she was about it and hoped she passed the class. I remember her telling us what she was doing in our family group chat, and my mom even responded, “Nice Kells! Now if we have a heart attack you can revive us.”

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Who is Kim Pegula?

Mother of tennis player Jessica Pegula, Kim Pegula is an American businesswoman who along with her husband Terry Pegula is the President of the Buffalo Bills and Buffalo Sabres of the NFL. She is also the president of Pegula Sports and Entertainment, the holding company that manages the Bills, as well as the National Hockey League's Buffalo Sabres, the National Lacrosse League's Buffalo Bandits and Rochester Knighthawks, and the American Hockey League's Rochester Americans.

Kim Pegula’s nationality is American. However, she was born in Seoul, South Korea. She was abandoned in the streets at the age of five and has no recollection of her birth name and no record of her biological parents. Mrs. Pegula was brought to the USA where she was then adopted by a family in Fairport, New York.

During her college days, she met her husband Terry Pegula and they entered into a relationship, which ended with them getting married in 1993. Kim Pegula and Terry Pegula share three children with each other: Kelly, Matthew, and Jessica. She is also the stepmother to Terry Pegula’s two kids, Michael and Laura, which he had from his previous marriage.