Billionaire American tennis heiress and daughter of NFL owner Jessica Pegula suffers Wimbledon humiliation

American tennis star Jessica Pegula was on the wrong end of another major upset on Tuesday after suffering a shock first-round defeat against Italy's Elisabetta Cocciaretto at Wimbledon.

The current world No 3, who was also sent packing at the French Open by world No 361 Lois Boisson last month, was beaten 6-2, 6-3 by the unseeded 24-year-old in less than an hour to continue her miserable 2025 at Grand Slams.

After making it to her first ever final at the US Open last year, Pegula, 31, was dumped out of the curtain-raising Australian Open in the third round, before slumping to defeat against Boisson in the fourth round of the French.

The surprise loss to Cocciaretto, who had never beaten a player ranked inside the top five before today, marks the nadir after her SW19 hopes went up in smoke in the very first round.

It also goes down as her worst Grand Slam showing for five years, since she was eliminated in the first round at the French Open in 2020.

'I don't know,' Pegula said in her post-match press conference when asked what went wrong. 'She played absolutely incredible tennis. Do I think I played the best match ever? No, but I definitely don't think I was playing bad. It wasn't like I was playing that bad.

Jessica Pegula crashed out of Wimbledon in the first round after a shock defeat on Tuesday

The daughter of billionaire NFL owner Terry Pegula is having a miserable 2025 at Grand Slams

'She just was, yeah, hitting her shots and going for it, serving big, serving high percentage, going big second serves, redirecting the ball. It was just her day I honestly think today, yeah.'

'I mean, it's really a bummer to lose,' she continued. 'I haven't lost the first round of a slam in a very long time, so that sucks.

'I used to kind of have trouble getting past the first round for a while. I remember I had a really tough match. I just told myself, I'm done losing first round, I'm not losing first round. I've been able to flip that mentality and have great results at slams and be really consistent as slams.

'Yeah, for this to happen today, it's disappointing. I don't know how else to put it. I'm upset that I wasn't able to turn anything around. But at the same time, I do feel like she played kind of insane. Hats off to her. Kudos to her for playing at a high level that I couldn't match it today.

'Bonus is I can go prep for the hard courts, which seems to be my favorite surface anyways, and see if I can just make some more magic this summer, I guess.'

She came into the All England Club having won the grass-court Bad Homburg Open in Germany over the weekend when she beat Iga Swiatek in straight sets.

Yet Pegula, who is the daughter of billionaire NFL owner Terry Pegula, will now go back to the drawing board and look to get back in form ahead of the US Open, which gets underway at the end of August.

The New Yorker made it to her first ever final in 2024, where she suffered a straight-sets loss to then-world No 2 Aryna Sabalenka.

Pegula lost 6-2, 6-3 against unseeded 24-year-old Elisabetta Cocciaretto in less than an hour

Before her stunning defeat to Cocciaretto, Pegula admitted she finds tournament hotels 'mentally draining' and that she would be booking her own accommodation for Wimbledon.

Her father Terry, who is an oil and gas mogul, is worth $7.6billion according to Forbes. Terry and his wife Kim also bought the NFL's Buffalo Bills in 2014.

'It's such a big part of our lives, and as I've gotten older, a good hotel has become more of a priority,' she said, via Tennis.com.

'When you're 20 and you're just starting to travel, you're not complaining that much: you're more out there grinding and embracing life on tour. Once you hit 30 and kind of need a better pillow, that stuff honestly becomes really important!'

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