By Chris Oddo | @TheFanChild | Tuesday October 12, 2021
American Shelby Rogers notched a dramatic three-set victory over Leylah Fernandez to reach the last eight at Indian Wells.
Photo Source: Getty
Unseeded Shelby Rogers stuck to her guns on Tuesday and scripted another enormously gratifying victory. The American, who has displayed a penchant for coming through dramatic contests in recent years (the current World No.40 took out World No.1 Ash Barty at the US Open in September and and defeated Maria Sakkari at Wimbledon this summer), flipped the script on No.23-seeded Leylah Fernandez as she overcame the highly touted Canadian in a three-set shootout, 2-6, 6-1, 7-6(4).
“I thought it was an incredible battle today,” Rogers told reporters after the match. “I thought we both played really well at times, and it was a sort of tug-of-war kind of match, one that's really fun to play actually. It's a special sort of challenge.”
Fernandez herself made a habit out of winning in third sets during the US Open, could not weather the heavy thunder of Rogers ground game down the stretch in a match that came down to just a few points from either side.
Rogers said the atmosphere inside Stadium 1 fueled the performance of both players.
“The crowd was into it on both sides,” she said. “They wanted good tennis. They wanted more tennis. So I'm just really happy to come through that one and overcome some, you know, emotional and mental battles during that match and beat someone that's playing really well.”
Confidence? Who needs Confidence?
Rogers gave her views on confidence after her win, saying that you don’t necessarily need to be riding a winning streak to have that internal belief.
“Confidence is a funny thing,” Rogers said. “It can kind of come and go. For me, it's a little bit of how you view it, as well. You could always see it as confidence is always there in a way, and you have it, you just have to pull it out at certain moments.”
Rogers has a theory about that, not unlike Victoria Azarenka, who last year talked a great deal about the relationship between playing well and confidence while making a run to the US Open final. Azarenka believes you have to find confidence before you can begin to win – not because of the wins.
Rogers sees it similarly.
“I think it's more like experience for me that brings the "confidence," but I think people just put – maybe not overrated, but people just put a lot of emphasis on confidence, and I think you can win a lot of matches without it still, if you're really good at bluffing it and you have good body language and you have good tactics and you win the right points at the right time,” she said. “I think if confidence gets in your head too much, that's what I mean by overrated, like it can sway you one way or another, and I don't think it needs to have that power. At least that's what I'm telling myself.”
The American will take on Jelena Ostapenk0 who defeated Iga Swiatek on Tuesday, in the quarterfinals.