Their nationality and tennis prowess aren’t the only things Emma Navarro and Jessica Pegula have in common.
The American tennis stars, each just one win away from clinching a spot in the U.S. Open’s singles final, are also the daughters of billionaires who’ve each played down their privilege after entering the international spotlight.
Pegula, 30, is the daughter of Terry Pegula, the owner of the NFL’s Buffalo Bills, the NHL’s Buffalo Sabres and founder of natural gas company, East Resources. He’s worth an estimated $7.7 billion, according to Forbes, placing him at No. 373 on global net worth rankings.
The younger Pegula was born in Buffalo but lives and trains in sunny South Florida, where she’s transformed herself into a prolific tennis star. She’s ranked No. 6 in the world and has become a multi-millionaire in her own right, having won $14.3 million in prize cash since she turned pro in 2009.
Pegula, whose mother was born in South Korea and is still recovering from going into sudden cardiac arrest in 2022, has insisted her upbringing wasn’t as different as many assume.
“People think I have a butler, that I get chauffeured around,” she told Agence France Presse this week. “[That] I have a private limo, that I fly private everywhere. I’m definitely not like that.”
Pegula said she finds the assumptions made about her, the daughter of a 73-year-old oil magnate, to be “a little annoying.” She’s certainly gone lengths to prove she’s not above the every-day person, posting a clip recently that showed her taking the subway in New York instead of a private car.
“My agent makes fun of me for not wanting to take a nice car,” Pegula said. “We actually went to Flushing one time—it took like an hour-and-a-half in the car and I wanted to throw up.”
Pegula shocked the tennis world by upsetting No. 1 Iga Swiatek, of Poland, in straight sets earlier this week. She’ll face off against the 2023 French Open finalist, unseeded Czech Karolína Muchová on Thursday night with a spot in the final on the line.
Navarro, 23, may be awaiting Pegula in Saturday’s final, but she has to overcome a tougher test to get there. Her semifinal on Thursday is against the Belarusian Aryna Sabalenka—the world No. 2 in women’s singles.
Navarro, who’s widely regarded as a rising star, comes from an avid tennis family. She grew up in South Carolina where her dad, Ben Navarro, dipped into his estimated $1.5 billion net worth to purchase the Charleston Tennis LLC (owners of the Charleston Open) in 2019. He also owns the rights to the Cincinnati Open and founded the Sherman Financial Group.
Ben Navarro and his wife, Kelly, are often spotted courtside at their daughter’s matches. The younger Navarro credited her dad with pushing her to become the athlete she is today.
“I want to thank my dad who saw a vision from when I was really young,” she recently told ESPN. “He knew maybe I was a little bit ADHD to be sitting in a classroom or a 9-to-5, and I think he saw something in me from a young age, so thanks, dad, for sending me on this journey.”
Navarro won the 2021 NCAA singles championship while representing the University of Virginia, where her younger sister is now a member of the same team. She turned heads in this summer’s U.S. Open after she eliminated its defending champion, the No. 3 seed Coco Gauff, in the fourth round. She’s won $2.5 million in prize money in her playing career.
Navarro, like Pegula, has not shied away from speaking about growing up with immense privilege—though she’s made it a point to emphasize that her place in the tennis world is largely due to her work ethic, not because of her 61-year-old dad’s net worth.
“I did have access to resources as a kid, but I don’t want that to take away from the fact that I’ve worked really, really hard to be where I’m at,” she said. “I’ve put a ton of hours in, and I started training twice a day and getting in the gym from the time I was eight, nine years old. It’s been a ton of hard work and dedication.”
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