Does the US Open's Billionaire Girls Club show that money is more important than talent? | US Open Tennis 2024

“C“I can't believe this is my life” is how Emma Navarro captioned a selfie she took during the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Paris. In the photo, she is standing on the bow of the US team's riverboat, wedged between Jessica Pegula and LeBron James. Fans on social media, however, had a completely different opinion. They couldn't believe that James, who will earn $48 million in salary alone this season, was the poorest person in the picture.

Navarro and Pegula, both natives of New York State, are members of an exclusive tennis sorority – the Billionaire Girls Club. Navarro, 23, is the daughter of Ben Navarro, who has a net worth of $1.5 billion and owns shares in the Cincinnati and Charleston Opens; Pegula, 30, is the daughter of another billionaire, Terry Pegula, a sports patron whose holdings include the Buffalo Sabres of the NHL and the Buffalo Bills of the NFL. The combined family fortune of these two women is nearly $10 billion – more than enough money to watch the U.S. Open from a box on Thursday night or even buy the entire stadium. Instead, they were on the court, putting it all on the line in the semifinals.

Navarro lost in straight sets to second seed Aryna Sabalenka, while Pegula won a three-set victory over Karolina Muchova to secure her first Grand Slam singles final spot of her career. “It's unbelievable,” Pegula said afterward. “It's a childhood dream. It's a lot of work, a lot of hard work. You can't imagine how much goes into it.” The fact that either woman could say she had the same problems as players from less affluent backgrounds is, to be honest, a bit much.

Although tennis originated in country clubs, many outstanding players have their perseverance. Andre Agassi is the son of a Las Vegas casino worker who fled Iran during the revolution. The Williams sisters were nearly consumed by poverty and violence in Compton. Novak Djokovic watched his father get into debt with loan sharks in war-torn Belgrade while financing his early development. Frances Tiafoe, who was aiming to reach this year's men's final of the US Open on his own, lived for 11 years in the tennis center where his father worked as a janitor.

Even the greats who grew up in relative wealth – players like Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal – grew up far below the wealth of Navarro and Pegula. Ernests Gulbis, a former top-10 Latvian player and the son of an investment banker and an actor, is the prodigious player who recalls a time before the Open when upper-class people like Bill Tilden and Suzanne Lenglen dominated the game.

As daughters of the privileged, Navarro and Pegula are closer to No babies than Nepo. Neither makes an effort to engage in conversations about their wealthy fathers. “The most annoying thing is that people think I have a butler,” Pegula said of fans' perceptions of their lifestyle. “That I'm chauffeured. That I have a private limousine. That I fly everywhere in a private jet. That's definitely not who I am.” She makes a point of downplaying her wealth and commutes to the U.S. Open by subway. Navarro is just as reserved, shying away from the spotlight and modestly asking the U.S. Open crowd for support because “I'm from New York.” The more they try to stay in the background, it seems, the more their fathers get in the way.

Ben Navarro, the owner of a bank that is one of the largest purchasers of consumer credit in the U.S., has built much of his credit thanks to borrowers with low credit scores. Terry Pegula, a fracking baron, was particularly targeted last year in a lawsuit filed by veteran NFL reporter Jim Trotter, who claims the Bills owner said black NFL players who participate in social justice demonstrations should “go back to Africa and see how bad it is there.” (Terry denied the claim, and the lawsuit is ongoing.) Terry Pegula also convinced New York state to cover more than half the cost of a new $1.54 billion home stadium for the Bills — the largest public subsidy ever paid for a new NFL stadium.

Just as Citizen Kane puts his wife at the opera even though she can't hold a note, Ben and Terry bankrolled their daughters' tennis dreams even though they were hardly considered tour pros. Emma and Jessica could very easily have ended up in the same upper class as offspring like equestrian Georgina Bloomberg or Formula 1 driver Lance Stroll: spoiled brats who can play to their hearts' content because they'll never run out of money. But to their great credit, the Billionaire Girls have to supplement their fathers' investments with hard work.

At 5'7″, Navarro is relatively small in the age of “big babe tennis.” But she put in a lot of time to improve her game, taking cues from the tricky Martina Hingis and testing it time and time again until she became the top college recruit in the U.S. At the University of Virginia, she lost a total of three matches in two years and still secured a wildcard to the 2021 U.S. Open. After graduating from college in 2022, Navarro has worked hard to establish herself as a consistent contender on the women's tour.

Thursday's loss at the US Open was the 197th match Navarro has played in the last two years to improve her world ranking from 127th to 12th. Fans can joke all they want about her reaching tournaments with ease on a private jet; she makes no apologies to her family. “My family is incredibly supportive and always has my back no matter what,” she said after the match. “To them, I'm more of a daughter and a sister than a tennis player.”

Pegula is equally relentless, the 15-year tour veteran who has been overshadowed by her compatriots, not least her doubles partner Coco Gauff. It took until 2021 for Pegula to break through at a Grand Slam tournament, although she soon developed a reputation for getting stuck in the quarterfinals. It seemed that might be the case again on Wednesday night when she played Iga Świątek. But this time she held her nerve and stuck to the steady, tactical approach that has become her trademark to beat the No. 1 seed. On Saturday, Pegula will play for the US Open title — joining Martina Navratilova and Serena Williams as the only Americans to achieve the feat after turning 30. And yet, to call Pegula and Navarro's rises heroic still seems far-fetched.

After all, billionaires are the villains of society. Nobody wants to hear what She But through their stubborn persistence, Navarro and Pegula stand out from the stereotype And their professional colleagues. Of course, other players are there for the money; that's how it has to be. Navarro and Pegula? They're playing for respect. You have to take your hat off to them.

After Navarro's semifinal loss on Thursday, her father found his way to the players' warm-up area at the Ashe to console her. After Pegula secured her spot in the final, the stadium's big screen showed her father in a luxury box, looking down proudly. All in all, it was a big night for the Billionaire Girls Club. Sure, money gave them an early advantage – but it didn't give them a work ethic. It put them in the best position to showcase their talent.