Grand Slam matches are always hotly anticipated. But the final of the US Open is garnering particular attention as it could witness a showdown between two billionaire heiresses.
Tennis players Emma Navarro, 23, and Jessica Pegula, 30, both daughters of American UHNWs, have reached the semi-finals of the New York City tournament.
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Navarro, daughter of former Citigroup vice president Ben Navarro, and Pegula, daughter of oil magnate Terry Pegula, will compete in their respective semi-final matches on Friday. If both are triumphant, they will go head-to-head in the final at Flushing Meadows on Saturday.
Both Navarro and Pegula competed at Wimbledon but were knocked out in the quarter-finals and second round, respectively.
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Ranked in the top 15 female tennis players worldwide, Navarro and Pegula have earned millions of dollars each on the international tennis circuit. However their fortunes are dwarfed by those of their fathers.
Terry Pegula is the founder of East Resources, a natural gas drilling company, which he built up in the Eighties and Nineties before later selling the assets to Royal Dutch Shell and American Energy Partners for a combined $6.4 billion.
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Pegula, who owns both the Buffalo Bills NFL team and the Buffalo Sabres NHL team, has an estimated fortune of just under $8 billion, according to Forbes.
He shares his love of sports with Ben Navarro, whose Sherman Financial Group owns the Credit One, a bank specialising in credit cards for borrowers with low credit scores. Worth $1.5 billion, Navarro owns a tennis club in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, Charleston Tennis LLC, and rights to the Cincinnati Open.
It remains to be seen whether Pegula and Navarro will be on hand to cheer on their daughters as the US Open reaches its conclusion. But there is every chance Saturday’s final could be a billionaire match-up to remember.
