NEW YORK _ Maybe a long break from competitive tennis is just what Sloane Stephens needed. Maybe having foot surgery isn't the ideal way to take yourself out of the game, but she's on a comeback and that continued on Friday at the U.S. Open.
Stephens won her match over Ashleigh Barty to reach the fourth round, which is as far as she's ever gotten in five previous tries at the Open. That does not include last year, when she was sitting out with a left foot injury suffered at the Rio Olympics that ultimately required surgery. She didn't make it back to the tour until this past Wimbledon, nearly 11 months out of competition.
Friday's 6-2, 6-4 win on the unfamiliar confines of temporary Armstrong Stadium is another exclamation point in what has been a surprisingly effective summer. The level of tennis on Friday wasn't the highest, but sometimes it's about playing just good enough to win.
"I thought I played all around pretty solid," Stephens said. "She's tricky to play because she does a lot of different things. I was happy that through everything that she kind of gave to me, I was able to just stay consistent and play my game."
After a first-round loss at Wimbledon, and another at Washington, she reached the semifinals of two straight hard court tournaments, losing to Caroline Wozniacki at Toronto and Simona Halep at Cincinnati. At Toronto, she beat Angelique Kerber, who was the defending U.S. Open champion.
On Wednesday night, Stephens showed some resolve with a three-set win over one of the tour's grittiest players, Dominika Cibulkova. She won the first set and was up 4-1 in the second, only to lose it, and was forced to rally in the third. That set a benchmark for her current standard of play.
She says she benefitted from a "reset" during the time off, but also worked hard to rehab and stay physically fit.
"I'm not going to say (the results are) totally surprising," Stephens said on Wednesday. "I don't think anyone expected me to play as well, have the results I have. I'm not going to say I knew this was happening. If I worked really hard, something like this could be happening, and it did."
And now, she's feeling more like she's really back.
"After like the first week, I was like I don't know if this is a comeback," Stephens said on Friday. "I played five matches in a row, then the next week played another four matches or something, then here. So I don't know if it's really a comeback any more. I'll go with it if I sounds better."
