Jessica Pegula joins Internationaux de Strasbourg field in Roland Garros pre-cursor

Jessica Pegula has added her name to the field of the Internationaux de Strasbourg, a WTA 500 in the week before Roland Garros begins.

Pegula lost early in Madrid to Moyuka Uchijima but made a perfect start to her campaign in Rome seeing off Ashlyn Krueger to extend her unbeaten record against her fellow American.

But she will play for an extra week. Pegula came into the clay court season as one of the best players in the world having reached the Miami final, she won Charleston and had also won Austin prior to the Sunshine Double.

She decided against playing at Billie Jean King Cup but played Stuttgart where she lost early on to Ekaterina Alexandrova. She also has another goal in mind it seems with the World No.2 spot up for grabs in the coming weeks.

It is a fight between her and Coco Gauff for the second spot if Iga Swiatek trips up in the coming weeks. The Pole has Rome to defend this week as well as Roland Garros. But it is very much taking the chance while they can.

Swiatek is poor usually on grass so it is unlikely that she would relinquish the spot without a poor end to her clay court season while Pegula and Gauff will start to defend more and more as the season heads towards the US.