Jessica Pegula Beats World No 1 Aryna Sabalenka With 6-0 Third Set To Reach Berlin Open Final

Jessica Pegula walked off the court in Berlin on Saturday having beaten world number one Aryna Sabalenka 6-4, 6-7(4), 6-0 in the semifinal of the Berlin Open, and the third set alone was enough to make the match one of the more extraordinary results of the grass-court season. A rain delay that lasted over two hours, a second-set tiebreak that swung in every direction imaginable, and then a final set where Sabalenka failed to win a single game and by the end of it Pegula was into the final and Sabalenka was heading back to the locker room trying to figure out what had gone wrong.

Pegula looked confident and controlled from the start of the match, and she was working the first set well and taking it to a 6-4 with a break in the third game that she never gave back. Sabalenka responded more strongly in the second set. She came out very sharp, broke early, and pushed herself and built a lead of 5-2, where she had two set points on Pegula's serve, which effectively closed things out. The momentum then shifted as Sabalenka was broken while serving for the set at 5-3, allowing Pegula back into the contest. What had looked like a most comfortable second set cushion suddenly turned into nothing. As the second set moved into a tiebreak, Sabalenka fell behind 1-3 before the rain came and stopped everything for two hours and nineteen minutes.

Whatever the both players went through, but the rain break appeared to have a positive effect on Sabalenka, at least for a short period of time. When play resumed, she looked much more aggressive and confident in her game, which significantly resulted in winning six of the next seven points to secure the tiebreak and level the match at one set each. However, the momentum quickly dropped again in the deciding set, where Pegula broke Sabalenka's serve in the opening game, and she remained very solid on serve throughout the set, which was very rare allowing her opponent any opportunities and closed out the match with a dominant 6-0 scoreline, while Sabalenka won only 13 of the 42 points played.

Pegula won 110 of the 200 total points in the match, and was more effective on serve, winning 66 percent of her service points compared to Sabalenka's 55 percent, as those numbers paint a picture of a player who was simply more solid across the board when it mattered. Meaning, these statistics ultimately reflected her consistency across these three sets and her ability to perform well in crucial situations. So, this win for Pegula is fourth in 13 career matches against Sabalenka and her sixth victory over regaining world number one. And there is no notable result in her career against top-ranked players. After the match, Pegula remembered, measured in her reaction and focused on performance rather than the significance of the achievement . "She came out and ripped a bunch of winners after the rain delay and I told myself, I guess I wanted to win the hard way anyway," she said, then added that she doesn't really do emotional celebrations because it feels like a waste of energy. Sabalenka's world number one ranking stays the same after this result since she defended the points she had picked up by reaching the Berlin semifinal last year.

Both Players Now Head Straight Into Wimbledon 2026

Wimbledon begins on June 29, which means both players have barely a week to reset before the draw goes up and the grass at the All England Club takes over. Sabalenka goes in as the top seed and world number one, and she is still looking for her first singles title there despite having had several strong runs in previous years. Pegula arrives in form, with the confidence of having beaten the world number one and reached a Berlin final during the weeks leading into the Grand Slam. The defending champion is Iga Swiatek, who took the title last year with a 6-0, 6-0 win over Amanda Anisimova in a final that lasted just 57 minutes.

Sportscape feels that Pegula keeps doing this and showing up on the biggest occasions and making the result look almost routine, even when the match itself is anything but. A 6-0 third set against the world number one in a Grand Slam warm-up event is a result that would give any player confidence heading into Wimbledon, and Pegula has earned every bit of it. Sabalenka's ranking does not suffer from this result, but the manner of the loss a deciding set where she won barely a third of the points played is the kind of thing that tends to get picked apart in the build-up to a major, and how she responds to it in the opening rounds at the All England Club will be worth watching closely.