By Randy Walker
@TennisPublisher
In addition to the fake, piped in applause that fans heard from the Australian Open TV feed after Jessica Pegula upset No. 5 seed Elina Svitolina to register her first career Top 10 win and reach her first Grand Slam quarterfinal, I’m sure there was some applause from up above from my late father.
My father Ewing S. Walker, who passed away in July of 2017, was probably the biggest fan of Pegula outside of the circle of her family and friends. It germinates from him having deep roots in Western New York, where Pegula is from, from his love of watching “underdog” players for years at the U.S. Open qualifying tournament and others and from a chance and pleasant experience meeting Jessica’s father Terry Pegula around 1985.
My father’s mother was from Olean, New York and my dad spent Christmas time and July there every year and at nearby Cuba Lake. It was a very special and sentimental place for him until his dying day. I was able to still find in my email inbox an email that he copied me on in 2013, which described meeting Pegula at the Northstar Grill on Cuba Lake, a very modest bar and restaurant just off Cuba Lake. He then included a plug for his favorite stock at the time, Sabine Royalty.
“Thirty years ago, I knew a man in Olean who worked for Felmont Oil there. Wendy (my father’s girlfriend) met him too at Northstar. Terry Pegula was his name. Just a guy with a job. Felmont was merged and he lost his job and started a company to rework old fields in PA and NY. Last summer I read where Terry Pegula bought the Buffalo hockey team for 180 million. Could not be the same guy???? But it is. He hit it big with Marcellus fields and sold out for $2 billion. That is “B” for Billion. SBR might be the same.”
According to news reports, just after being let go from Felmont Oil, around the time when my father had this meeting, Pegula founded a natural gas drilling company with $7,500 from family and friends. The company then became worth billions.
My father followed the Pegula name in the news, also having also having an interest in Natural Gas (his great grandfather, Riley Allen, was a partner in the first well in the town of Richburg, N.Y. and our family still gets a whopping $7 in annual royalty checks). It wasn’t a surprise he discovered that Terry’s daughter Jessica was an aspiring young tennis pro. He would talk with me about following her career and results and when Jessica was able to play in the U.S. Open qualifying rounds (my dad’s favorite part of the tournament), he would watch and cheer or her. Emails from my dad on Jessica’s results came into my inbox almost as steadily as a Google News Alert.
My dad was, unfortunately, not able to watch her play in the 2015 U.S. Open qualifying as he had just had eye surgery and was not able to travel to New York from Washington, D.C. I was in the stands watching her win her final-round qualifying match and made sure to email him some pictures and videos where she got through to play in the main draw of a major for the first time.
So now, whenever I see Jessica Pegula play, I think of my dad. I’ve been thinking about him a lot at the 2021 Australian Open.
