Crossing the Finish Line

“All the best,” Nick Saviano said to Sloane Stephens as he turned and walked away from her. It was a little odd, as far as sign-offs go; Saviano, Stephens’ coach, sounded like he had just finished writing her a long letter, when in reality he had just wrapped up a two-minute coaching visit. But in another sense his words were entirely appropriate. Stephens, in a way that she had never done before, was bringing all of her best to her first WTA final.

It wasn’t so much that Sloane was in the process of beating Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, a player ranked within five spots of her, by the lopsided score of 6-1, 6-2. It wasn’t that she had shown no signs of nerves or fear during one of the biggest matches of her career. What was most impressive was how complete Sloane’s game was on this day, and how controlled and collected she was in implementing it.

“Sloane Stephens has all the answers!” Tennis Channel commentator Steve Weissmann crowed, a little incredulously, as she anticipated a short volley, raced forward to track it down, and delicately bunted the ball up the line for a winning pass.

“What an amazing backhand from Sloane,” Weissman’s partner in the booth, Tracy Austin, cried as Stephens rolled a two-hander at an acute crosscourt angle and followed it up with a swing volley winner. “It’s so beautiful the way she moved forward,” Austin added.

“It’s great to see her controlling the situation,” said the third member of the broadcast team, Paul Annacone, as Stephens, down 0-30 on her serve at the start of the second set, calmly stepped to the baseline and fired two aces. The second one came on a deliberate change-of-pace kick serve out wide that Pavlyuchenkova could only wave at as it went past.

You could hear the surprise in the commentators’ voices, and you could understand it for a couple of reasons.

Serena Williams aside, U.S. tennis hasn’t been known for its creativity and versatility in recent years; serve big and hit your forehand bigger has long been the recipe for (moderate) success in the States. But here was Stephens, who can also belt a serve and a forehand, showing us much more.

As far as Sloane’s own history goes, it was her composure that was the pleasant surprise. She took her time, she picked the right shots, she constructed rallies, and she rarely pulled the trigger too soon. This wasn’t a litter-up-the-stat-sheet type of win, where the player pays the price for her winners with an equal number of errors. Stephens played with intelligent aggression.

Afterward, she was philosophical. Two years ago, Sloane had been touted as the future of American tennis, yet before this week, she was the only player in the WTA’s Top 40 never to have reached a final. Now, in her 84th tournament, Stephens has a title.

“I’ve had a lot of ups and downs,” Sloane said, sounding like a world-weary, 32-year-old veteran rather than a 22-year-old presumably entering her prime. “Nothing was rushed. Nothing was given to me. I had to work for everything, and it was just nice that all the hard work and everything that I put into it, now I can say I have a tournament title.”

It would be easy, and perhaps prudent, to stop here and bring some perspective to the situation. Stephens’ title came at a small, International-level WTA event; Ekaterina Makarova was the highest-ranked player in the draw; Stephens didn’t beat anyone who was in the Top 20 as of last week; she got a walkover against a dangerous opponent, Svetlana Kuznetsova, in the second round; and the streaky Pavlyuchenkova didn’t offer much resistance in the final.

Nevertheless, despite all those caveats, and with the full knowledge that Stephens isn’t going to save U.S. tennis by herself anytime soon, this was a win to celebrate—the reality checks could come later. Sloane has been through too many low moments not to savor one that ended on such a high note.

“Last year I was going through a learning process,” Stephens said on Sunday. “I learned a lot about myself. And there’s still a lot of room to grow. Sometimes you have to go through the process. To get to this place, to get to this beautiful trophy, I had to go through a lot, but at the end of the day it was definitely worth it.”

What Stephens seems to have decided, at the end of that process, is that she likes tennis and wants to find out how far her obvious talent for it can take her. You could see that most clearly in the semifinals, in the way Sloane fought tooth and nail to come back and win a first-set tiebreaker over the best player she faced all week, Sam Stosur.

"The positive energy is flowing from Sloane," Weissman said near the end of that breaker. That's not a sentence we've heard often since she beat Serena Williams at the Australian Open two years ago and instantly became the new face of the game in this country. After that win, Stephens, taken aback by the attention and the expectations, retreated. She played in unhappy funks, failed to click with different coaches, feuded with Serena in the press, and watched her ranking fall out of the Top 50. By the start of 2015, she wasn’t the face of the U.S. game anymore.

This year Stephens has been aided by two developments: She reconnected with her old coach, Saviano; and she watched as another young U.S. player, Madison Keys, took her place as the country’s Next Great Hope. That allowed Sloane to return to a more normal developmental pace. The spotlight was elsewhere, and she was working with a familiar and welcome person from her past. In that way, Stephens is like a number of U.S. players of late—Mardy Fish, John Isner, and now Keys—who have talked about how difficult it can be to carry the country’s tennis mantle. All of them seem have enjoyed living in someone else’s shadow, rather than leading the way.

Now Stephens, who is hardly over the hill at 22, is creeping back out of the shadows. She’s back in the Top 30 and has proven that she can cross the finish line—something that most players never even approach. If Sloane can keep giving Saviano, and the rest of us, all of her best, she won't have to wait 84 tournaments to cross another.