Will Jelena Ostapenko recapture the magic of her Slam-winning season?

Court Report: Australian Open to introduce 10-point tiebreaker in deciding set

Jelena Ostapenko entered 2017 as one of the WTA’s bright young stars and by the end of the year, proved she more than deserved that recognition with a surprise run to the French Open title and a top-10 finish.

This year, though, the first Grand Slam champion from Latvia took a step back and ended the year ranked outside of the top 20 and without a title.

Is a comeback in store in the months ahead, or will it take more time for her to re-establish herself among the game’s best?

After last year’s US Open, Ostapenko entered her next tournament in Seoul as a member of the top 10 for the first time. She backed up her lofty place in the standings by taking the title, the second of her career and first on a hard court. Though she didn’t face anyone in the top 70 over the course of the week, it was a strong tune-up for the more exacting tournaments on the horizon.

At the Premier 5 level event in Wuhan, China, Ostapenko reached the semifinals with an impressive win over world No. 1 Garbine Muguruza in the quarterfinals. She followed that result up with another semifinal, this time at the Premier Mandatory tournament in Beijing, where it took world No. 2 Simona Halep to stop her in a rematch of their French Open final a few months prior.

Solidifying her spot in the WTA Finals, Ostapenko dropped her opener against Venus Williams in Singapore in one of 2017’s best matches, then lost a straight-sets decision to Muguruza. She closed out her stay with a win over Karolina Pliskova to cap off one of the year’s breakthrough performances.

In the opening quarter of this year, the Latvian got off to a slow start, reaching only one quarterfinal in her first seven stops, but still managed to reach a career-high No. 5 in the world. Things appeared to take a turn at the Miami Open as she advanced to the final without losing a set, including fourth-round and quarterfinal wins against top-tenners Petra Kvitova and Elina Svitolina, respectively. After dropping a tight first set against Sloane Stephens in the championship match, though, Ostapenko was overwhelmed in the second, giving the American her first title of the year.

Leading up to the French Open, Ostapenko played in three tournaments and made it to the quarterfinals in two of them. Her Roland Garros stay was shorter than anyone would have predicted as she fell in the opening round to Kateryna Kozlova, becoming the first defending champion to lose that early in 13 years.

Bouncing back on the grass, the 2014 Wimbledon girls’ winner made her first semifinal at the main event. Turning to the hard courts afterward, Ostapenko lost her first two matches in Montreal and Cincinnati, before winning a couple of rounds at the US Open. And the Asia Swing, where she starred a year earlier, was particularly unkind: She finished the year with an opening-round loss in Hong Kong to Kristina Kucova, ranked 317 in the world.

With her powerful groundstrokes and aggressive, go-for-broke mind-set, Ostapenko can run into trouble when she’s not firing on all cylinders. Add in the pressure of trying to defend all of the points earned from the prior year, and the adjustment period can be somewhat prolonged.

Younger players, though, throughout the course of the sport’s history have had to figure out what to do for an encore after they’ve announced themselves on the global stage.

And if Ostapenko wanted to look for guidance on how to handle this situation, an eventual three-time French Open champion could provide the perfect blueprint.

Twenty years before her French Open title, another unseeded player made a triumphant appearance at Roland Garros, winning his first career title at the world’s biggest clay-court tournament.

Gustavo Kuerten of Brazil, 20 years old at the time and ranked even lower than Ostapenko at 66, defeated three former champions on his way to the title. His defense ended early the next year as he fell in the second round, which was actually one of his best Grand Slam finishes of 1998. He managed to win two titles during the season, but his upward momentum appeared to be stalled.

In 1999, “Guga” bounced back to win his first two Masters 1000 events and a year later, was again crowned the champion at Roland Garros. He defended his title there the following year as the No. 1 player in the world, and eventually reached the Hall of Fame when his playing days were done.

Provided she continues along the forward track she’s moved upon in the early stages of her career and is able to look at 2018 as an adjustment year, Ostapenko could follow a similar arc.

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