Traveling around the globe is nothing new for tennis pros, but Jessica Pegula recently proved they still deal with relatable travel hiccups. Ahead of her tournament appearance in Toronto, Pegula opted for what should have been a quick, two-hour road trip from Buffalo, New York. Instead, her plan was derailed by a simple question from her husband, Taylor Gahagen.
Jessica Pegula Reveals Hilarious Road Trip Fiasco Before Canadian Open With Husband Taylor
Pegula had just flown into Buffalo, her hometown, and was fully prepared to drive her own car across the border into Canada, as Toronto is only two hours away. The plan was simple, and the bags were already loaded, until her husband, Taylor Gahagen, asked a crucial question.
“I literally pack the bags in the car, and my husband Taylor goes, ‘Oh, you have your registration, right?’ I was like, ‘I can’t remember the last time I thought about my registration for my car in Buffalo.’ I’m there once a year,” Pegula recalled on “The Player’s Box Podcast.”
The reality quickly set in when she checked the license plate, discovering the registration had expired two years prior.
Hoping for a quick digital fix, Pegula logged onto her account to check her vehicle statuses. While her Florida-based car was perfectly fine, the Buffalo vehicle was flagged. Worse yet, the system blocked her from resolving the issue on the spot.
“I try to click like ‘renew,’ and it’s like blacked out, and I was like, ‘No,'” Pegula explained. The system delivered the dreaded bureaucratic news: “It says, ‘Because your car has been expired, the registration’s been expired for over a year, you have to go into the DMV.'”
With her own car officially sidelined and no legal way to drive it across international borders, Pegula had to change the plan.
“I was like, ‘Oh, looks like I’ll be driving your car, honey,'” she joked.
The couple was forced to unpack her vehicle completely, drag all of her tennis gear and luggage over to her husband’s car, and repack before finally hitting the road for the Canadian swing.
The travel crisis was temporarily averted, but Pegula knows she still has to face the music once she returns home to Florida.
“Now I get to go back to the DMV, which I will be at the one in Loxahatchee,” she added.
Gahagen is a corporate executive and former corporate development director for Pegula Sports and Entertainment. The couple began dating around 2015 and married in October 2021 at the Biltmore Estate in North Carolina. Currently, Gahagen is the vice president of Pegula’s skincare company, Ready 24, and helps her run her charitable foundation, A Lending Paw.
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On the tennis front, in Toronto, Pegula, a two-time champion, suffered an unexpected 3-6, 3-6 loss to Diana Shnaider in the Round of 16. However, the World No. 3 reached the final of the 2026 Mubadala DC Open, where she finished as the runner-up to Alexandra Eala in a rain-delayed championship match.
Next up, at the Cincinnati Open, Pegula will play as the third seed, as it’s a key warm-up event before the last Grand Slam of the year, the US Open.
