ZAPOPAN.-“I’m very nervous, I haven’t done this for a long time,” said Sloane Stephens while taking the microphone at her award ceremony as champion of the Zapopan Open 2022. The former Grand Slam monarch (US Open 2017) raised the trophy of Jalisco after beating one of the darlings of the fans, the Czech Marie Bouzkova, in three sets, with partials of 7-5, 1-6 and 6-2.
The amazement at the victory has a compelling reason: the last championship that Stephens had achieved was in March 2018, when he won the Miami Masters 1000 against Jelena Ostapenko. She later racked up three losing finals at Roland Garros, the Canadian Open and the WTA Finals, all in 2018.
Stephens kicked off the 2022 WTA Tour with an Australian Open first round loss to Emma Raducanu. She comes from a year that was not full of many spotlights either, because of 17 tournaments played on the 2021 Tour she only managed to advance to a few semifinals and lost them, within the Emilia-Romagna Open (level 250). It has been months of learning, adaptation and the top has risen again.
“I had an incredible start to the year, also in my personal life. I knew my year was going to start here (in Zapopan), I was going to have to be able to win a few matches in a row, obviously I want my ranking to go back to how it was before, so I got to work after the Australian Open and I had a very good training block”, he expressed in Zapopan.
The road did not paint her as a favorite. The Florida native came into her first appearance at the Akron Open as the sixth-best seed, behind Emma Raducanu, Madison Keys, Sara Sorribes, Camila Osorio and Nuria Parrizas. She had to show her strength from the first round, knocking out 14-year-old Brenda Fruhvirtova and then France’s Chloe Paquet. But one of the toughest tests was in the quarterfinals against Australian Daria Saville, who had eliminated Raducanu.
After that, he left out the Russian Anna Kalinskaya (who withdrew due to injury) and after winning against Bouzkova in the final, Stephens added 280 points and $31,000 to his purse, already adding $16.4 million in income in his 13 years as a professional. Zapopan represents her seventh title after winning the 2015 Washington Open, 2016 Auckland Open, 2016 Acapulco, 2016 Charleston, 2017 US Open and 2018 Miami Open.
The last match against Marie Bouzkova showed parity in the duel of points, since Stephens won by a difference of just 87 against 86. It cost her the first set until it was extended to 7-5 and it was complicated in the second with 1-6 , but in the final he required the Czech to slide from end to end in several games. The duel ended after two hours and 28 minutes.
“The year 2018 was a long time ago, I just try to do my best today. I did not play my most beautiful tennis in Guadalajara, but I just managed the games in the best way, ”he said in a post-match press conference.
This was Stephens’s debut at the Zapopan Open, where he arrived happy first because of his wedding to American soccer player Jozy Altidore (on January 1 of this year) and with new hopes after weeks of preparation.
“I felt very prepared but I did not expect this, I just knew that I had worked hard and I had to be honest with myself. I dedicated myself to work all last year and I did not see the most amazing results, but I feel that it is time and I am happy with the results that I am obtaining”.
Sloane faces a year of new emotions after suffering several family tragedies in a short period of time, since between December 2020 and January 2021 she lost her grandparents and an aunt due to the pandemic. She was unable to attend the funeral due to being concentrated in the security bubble of the Australian Open and it is something that she regretted, but she overcame it with attendance and fighting for her sport.
“The only thing I can do now is keep going and keep going. There’s nothing wrong with having one or two therapists and a grief counselor and all that stuff. I have to do what is best for me and work on myself, ”she reflected a few months later, at Roland Garros 2021.
Now, in February 2022, Sloane cracks a smile and raises her left fist in triumph. In the celebration of the Akron stadium, he thanked the Guadalajara public for their closeness and also Marie Bouzkova for her high level of competition. The former number 3 in the world has rediscovered the path to victory and Zapopan was her first platform of the year. Her potential will require her to tell new stories.