young player

LONDON — During a weekend that celebrates life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, Wimbledon offers an American variation in the pursuit of Grand Slam glory.

Sunday’s fourth-round clash on the No. 1 Court between Jessica Pegula, the top-ranked American and veteran standard-bearer, and Iva Jovic, the brightest young American star since Coco Gauff, is a compelling intergenerational showdown between the present and future of U.S. women’s tennis.

It’s the kind of matchup worthy of a holiday complete with fireworks.

“I know she’s going to come after me hard,” the 32-year-old Pegula said following her clinical 6-1, 6-3 third-round defeat of Jessica Bouzas Maneiro of Spain on Friday.

“Everyone kind of wants to be the top American, I guess,” agreed Jovic, an 18-year-old from Torrance who toughed out a 6-3, 3-6, 6-4 win over Ekaterina Alexandrova of Russia on Friday to reach the fourth round at Wimbledon for the first time. “There is a little bit extra competition there.”

Pegula and Jovic are hardly unfamiliar opponents, and not just because people frequently told a young Jovic to model her game after Pegula. The two have met three times before, including twice this year, on hard courts in Dubai and on clay in Charleston, S.C. Pegula won all three matches.

American Jessica Pegula serves the ball during a win over Spain’s Sara Sorribes Tormo at Wimbledon on Wednesday.

(Kirsty Wigglesworth / Ap Photo/kirsty Wigglesworth)

“There is a lot of things we do well, and we do similar, but a couple of differences too,” Jovic noted of their baseline-centric, tactical styles.

Pegula is expecting nothing less than a mirror-like baseline duel from the player she affectionately dubbed “mini-me” after beating her in February.

Their career arcs have taken different paths to their first Grand Slam meeting. Pegula spent years grinding away on the Women’s Tennis Assn.’s lower tier before becoming a late-blooming major contender and top-10 mainstay. The experience gap remains enormous: Pegula owns 11 career singles titles to Jovic’s one and has amassed more than 500 tour-level wins compared with just over 100 for the teenager.

Jovic, a top-ranked junior in just her second Wimbledon, quickly has made her presence felt on tour, becoming the youngest player to win a WTA title last season at 17 before backing it up with her breakout quarterfinal run at the Australian Open in January. She is the youngest player in the top 20 and the youngest remaining in the Wimbledon singles draw.

After watching Jovic’s rise this season, Pegula praised her competitive instincts and rapid adjustment to grass.

Jovic “competes like an animal,” Pegula said.

Their relationship to grass, however, couldn’t be more different.

Pegula historically has not been a force at Wimbledon, reaching the quarterfinals only once in 2023. She acknowledges battling her own instincts on the surface.

“I feel like sometimes years in the past I’ve really fought against how to move on it, fought against all the intangibles, all the slices,” she said.

This year she’s relaxed her approach, improved her balance and added more pop to her serve, a major asset on grass.

Jovic, by contrast, has been a quick study when it comes to adapting to the tricky footing, sliding and occasional tumbles on grass. She’s taken to the lawns of London like a natural despite growing up in Los Angeles County, where grass courts are virtually nonexistent.

Jovic credits playing left wing in local soccer leagues from about ages 6 to 13 for her exceptional, low-to-the-ground footwork. That cross-training has paid dividends. She won her first professional title on grass in England last year and recently reached the semifinals at the prestigious Queen’s Club warmup event.

“It’s very closely related to the movement that we do in tennis,” Jovic said of soccer.

Jovic, who’s of Serbian and Croatian descent, also has been keeping tabs on the World Cup, though rooting for the U.S. during late starts has proved challenging in Europe.

Hall of Fame analyst Pam Shriver says the age gap adds a fascinating dimension to the grass-court chess match.

“It’s interesting when rivalries can develop generations apart from the same country, and I think they have a really good respect for each other,” Shriver said.

Torrance native Iva Jovic, left, congratulates fellow American Jessica Pegula after Pegula won their match during the Charleston Open on April 4 in Charleston, S.C.

(Matthew Stockman / Getty Images)

Shriver added that Jovic can learn from Pegula’s cerebral approach, while veterans like Pegula can tap into a fresh mindset from the younger generation’s unflinching energy.

“It goes by so fast,” Pegula acknowledged of the creeping sense of urgency in pursuit of her first major title.

Jovic is aware Sunday’s match is a massive opportunity to prove her rapid ascent is no fluke and flip the script on her head-to-head deficit.

“Hopefully, this will be the one I get her,” she said.

Through the first week in London, Pegula has been in sharper form. She hasn’t dropped a set in three matches, gliding into the fourth round and looking more and more like the favorite in her quarter. She also feasts on fellow Americans. Since 2023, Pegula is an impressive 34-3 against her compatriots.

“I’m always motivated to beat the other Americans in a way that’s different,” Pegula said. “Excited again to challenge myself against someone who is much younger, who is playing with nothing to lose and no fear.”

Still, reaching next weekend’s final will require either player to navigate a brutal top half of the draw. It includes four-time major winners Aryna Sabalenka and Naomi Osaka, two-time major champion Gauff and the last Wimbledon champion left in the field, 2024 winner Barbora Krejcikova.

On a weekend devoted to celebrating the U.S., at least one American will be celebrating at Wimbledon when the fireworks fade.

SEATTLE — Growing up the son of an NFL wide receiver, Alex Freeman said he felt a lot of pressure to play the American version of football, not the one the rest of the world plays.

“I always got asked if football was the path,” he said last summer. “But I always had a secret love for soccer.”

And he had to keep it a secret because he wasn’t sure his father Antonio, a Super Bowl winner with the Green Bay Packers, would understand.

But his stepfather did. Jake Hinkle introduced Alex to the sport and served as his first coach while his mother Rochelle urged him on.

Now his biological father, who last played in 2004, the year his son was born, has joined the cheering section as well.

“I was with him at the hotel,” Freeman said, “and he was just giving me those kinds of speeches that you hear from a dad. He’s just telling me to be myself. I think he knows that being myself has gotten me to this point. So why change that, right?”

Instead he put a massive exclamation mark on what has been a breakout 13 months by setting up Gio Reyna for the final goal of a 4-1 win for the U.S. in its World Cup opener against Paraguay. The U.S. returns to group play Friday in Seattle where it will face Australia, with the winner of the match taking the inside track toward advancing to the knockout rounds as the group champion.

Much of that still sounds like a dream to Freeman, who was playing for Orlando City’s reserve team in MLS Next Pro during the last World Cup. He wasn’t in the national team’s plans this time around either until coach Mauricio Pochettino called him in for an audition last year, something Freeman called a big surprise.

U.S. defender Alex Freeman kicks the ball over Paraguay forward Antonio Sanabria during the second half of a World Cup group stage match on June 12.

(Kelvin Kuo / Los Angeles Times)

But Freeman earned his first international start less than three weeks later, then played all but three minutes of the Americans’ six-game run through the Gold Cup, the team’s last competitive tournament before the World Cup.

Since joining the national team, Freeman has appeared in 17 consecutive matches and has become the ninth-youngest American to start a World Cup game.

Freeman, 21, is the youngest player on a young team, the second-youngest roster the U.S. has sent to a World Cup in more than three decades. That just doesn’t bode well for the future — it’s paying off in the present, too.

Reyna is on his second World Cup team at 23. Folarin Balogun, 24, had two goals in the U.S. opener, becoming the first American to score multiple times in a World Cup game in 96 years. And Chris Richards, 26, completed all 83 of his passes in the opener, the most without a miss by a World Cup player since 1966.

With an average age of 26.8 years, the U.S. is the fifth-youngest team in the World Cup. Leave captain Tim Ream, 38, out of the equation and only Ivory Coast and Ecuador have younger rosters.

Pochettino is being rewarded for giving those young players a chance, with five players making their World Cup debuts against Paraguay.

“He has this ability to find the potential [of] the young players and he is not scared to give them the responsibility to put them on the field,” LAFC goalkeeper Hugo Lloris, who played for Pochettino at Tottenham, told CBS Sports. “I can see a lot of coaches protecting themselves and try[ing] to not take that risk with the young players. But he’s not this kind of coach. If the young player deserve[s], he will be on the field.”

With Freeman, Pochettino broke with tradition in another way. Many national team coaches won’t call up players who aren’t starting for their club team, but Freeman has played more games and minutes with the U.S. this year than he has with Villarreal, the Spanish team he joined in January after appearing in only 32 MLS games with Orlando City.

The coach explained himself by saying he was choosing the “right 26” players for the World Cup, not the best 26. And Freeman fits Pochettino’s need for a defender who can transition seamlessly between a back three and back four, allowing the U.S. to play the kind of dynamic style the coach prefers.

If questions about his presence on the team have left him feeling slighted, Freeman says he’s fueled more by the adversity he has faced than by his recent success.

“Knowing that I’ve been in different environments, different situations, it’s how can I be consistently good, consistently solid, consistently making a difference?” he said. “Especially now in the World Cup, in another different environment. It’s how can I consistently help my team?”

A decade after making a clean break from football to play fútbol, Freeman says he has no regrets.

“I had to pick,” he said. “And soccer was the clear choice by far.”

Even his father, with whom he remains close, recently admitted as much, telling his son that playing in a World Cup beats winning a Super Bowl.

“Absolutely,” the younger Freeman said. “Seeing it now, especially throughout the last year I’ve been with the national team, knowing that it’s a different type of competition, it’s a different type of atmosphere? For sure.”