By Chris Oddo | Monday, March 30, 2015

 

Once maligned and misunderstood, Sloane Stephens is once again winning the hearts and minds of tennis fans.

Photo Source: Getty

In case you haven’t heard, Sloane Stephens matters again. Well, in fairness, she’s always mattered, but for the last 18 months she’s seemed to matter in a negative way to so many passionate fans and pundits who got carried away with her seemingly unlimited potential and then were left disappointed when the immediate payoff didn’t come. We said she was going to be the future of women’s tennis in America and she made us look bad! Who is she to do that?

After today’s hard-fought, high-level victory over Belinda Bencic in Miami, Sloane Stephens is mattering in a positive way again.

This time last year, Stephens was royally criticized for a lack of effort in a head-scratching loss against Caroline Wozniacki, which prompted Tennis Channel’s Mary Carillo to wonder out loud: “Is she trying to act cool? Or is she just not caring?”

It was merely one in a litany of attacks on Stephen’s commitment to the game. Count this writer as one of the guilty, I was left frustrated by what I perceived as a lack of fire on many occasions.

It was hard to tell what was going on with her. Stephens just seemed to be in a weird place mentally. It was like she was too busy thinking about how her actions would be perceived to just play tennis and leave it all out there on the court. Instead, she attempted to keep it all inside, locked away, so that nobody could misinterpret her actions and expressions.

It appears that a year later, Sloane the player is coming out of her shell again. She may never be as forthcoming in the press room as she once was (and there are good/bad reasons for that), but on the court she is clearly back in a good place, enjoying the game and relishing the fight.

And her once dwindling bandwagon is filling up. And pundits are taking notice, too.

“I saw her play quite a few matches in California now here in Miami, and I feel like her intensity is higher,” Mary Joe Fernandez today said in an ESPN conference call to promote the network’s coverage of the Miami Open. “I feel that she is using her great athletic ability to defend, but she’s also looking to use her forehand, and that’s her big weapon. So it just looks like it’s all coming back together, like she’s playing the right way for her game, she’s playing to her strengths a little bit more consistently, and she seems much more engaged point to point.”

Brad Gilbert, also on the conference call, has been similarly impressed.

“One, she’s got her passion back for being on the court,” he said. “She just didn’t look like for a while that she wanted to be there. Secondly, I think that Madison [Keys] having the big result in Australia, all of a sudden kind of put the talk that maybe there was all these others that were passing her by, and I think that re-motivated Sloane because she seems to really have her game and energy. She is doing some fist pumping and enjoying to be out there.”

Gilbert, always keen to notice the effects of good coaching on a player, has also echoed a sentiment that was expressed by Chris Evert at Indian Wells: Her decision to reunite with Nick Saviano is a big reason behind her recent rise. “I think a big thing for her is that Nick Saviano, who did a great job last year coaching Genie Bouchard, and I know has worked in the past with Sloane when she was a teenager now is traveling, I believe, with her full time,” Gilbert said. “Nick knows the ladies’ game as good as anybody. He’s an outstanding coach, and I think that he’s going to really bring a lot to the table for Sloane for becoming a top 10 player.”

One adored and embraced, then maligned and misunderstood, Sloane Stephens has now worked her way back into the good graces of American tennis fans. Is it simply because she has started to win again, or is it because there really is more joy in her game, something that naturally attracts fans, regardless of player’s results?

Does it matter? Maybe all that matters is that Sloane Stephens matters again. Sloane herself doesn’t seem all that concerned. The past is the past and here comes the future.

“Yeah, definitely not focused on anything that happened in the past,” Stephens said after today’s win, which was her seventh in her last eight matches. “Going forward and just getting out there and competing, trying to do my best every match.”

Sounds a bit cliché, but who are we to argue? The bandwagon just got its flat tire fixed, let’s not overthink this and screw it up.