At Center Stage Again, Stephens Looks to Rise

MELBOURNE, Australia - Sloane Stephens, one of the fastest players on the WTA Tour, is a slow starter. She has fallen behind in the first set of her first three matches at the Australian Open and won two of those sets.

Stephens, who seems to rise to more challenging occasions and opponents yet sometimes falls to lesser players on smaller stages, can be a difficult player to assess. She was remarkably consistent at the biggest tournaments last year. One of three players (along with the top-ranked Serena Williams and No. 5 Agnieszka Radwanska) to reach the fourth round or better at the four Grand Slam events, Stephens lost three times to the eventual champion and once to the eventual runner-up.

But she struggled at less daunting tournaments, failing to string together three consecutive victories at any of the 16 other tour events she played after breaking through at the 2013 Australian Open. Stephens has been within reach of the sport's most prestigious titles but has never reached a tournament final.

Although effusive, engaging and charming when she wants to be, Stephens has also been reluctant to speak to reporters since an ESPN the Magazine interview last year in which her remarks were seen as critical of Williams.

'I think last year was definitely a learning experience,' said Stephens, who has repeatedly declined interviews with the American news media in the last four months. 'I went through a lot of crazy things.'

Her biggest lift came at the Australian Open last year, when she upset Williams in the quarterfinals. Although Stephens fell behind early, she showed great poise in coming back against Williams, who remained a relentless competitor despite ankle and back pain.

In their semifinal, the defending champion Victoria Azarenka led comfortably, 6-1, 5-1, and then Stephens won the next three games. Azarenka took a 10-minute medical timeout off the court, changing the momentum of the match and drawing harsh criticism from the news media and fans.

Stephens, whose agent, John Tobias, also represents Azarenka, played down the incident.

'It was a lot, it was overwhelming,' Stephens said of last year's tournament. 'Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, everything was exploding. At the time, obviously, it was fun, it was exciting, and everything. But after a while it gets really overwhelming, and it kind of swallows you up.'

Stephens met with her mother and representatives to discuss ways to cope with the spotlight.

'I needed a reality check,' Stephens said. 'I needed someone to tell me, 'Look, this is how it is, and everyone has to deal with it.' I just realized that that's just how it's going to be, and you have to either embrace it or go the other way, which is to completely hate it and, like, be an idiot. I didn't want to go that way.'

Stephens, 20, added to that support network significantly during the off-season. She has a new hitting partner, Andrew Fitzpatrick, and a new physical trainer, Christian LoCascio, who worked with Mardy Fish before his hiatus from the tour.

Most notably, Stephens has a new coach, Paul Annacone, who worked with Roger Federer until last October. Despite Annacone's star-studded roster of past clients, including Pete Sampras and Tim Henman, Stephens was not intimidated. She called him 'a really nice guy.'

'I knew that he coached men before, only men,' Stephens said, 'and so I knew that was probably going to be a little tough. But other than that, I had to Google what he looked like. So, yeah, I obviously don't know much about the older people who played the game. I, like, YouTubed a video of him playing tennis, and he had these super-short shorts on.'

For Annacone, who now wears longer shorts, any hesitation about switching to the women's tour was alleviated by the potential he recognized in Stephens.

'To me, the most appealing aspect was that she's a young person,' Annacone said. 'So I could have a pretty significant impact because of her age. She'd just started to get closest to the highest level of the tour, so it was very encouraging to me because perhaps I could help her get more comfortable at that level, and maybe even push her to the upper limits of the women's tour.'

The pressure on Stephens to show that she belongs at the highest level has never been greater. She is defending a larger cache of ranking points than she ever has before because she reached the semifinals here last year. Annacone, however, helped put her at ease.

'Obviously, I was telling Paul I was really nervous about defending points,' she said. 'But he was just telling me that basically everyone starts from zero. It didn't matter if I lost first round; it really wouldn't matter.'

Next up for Stephens in the fourth round is an eagerly awaited rematch with Azarenka, their first meeting since last year's semifinal. Although they each train in the Los Angeles area and share an agent, Stephens told reporters at a news conference that her relationship with Azarenka was nonexistent.

'I'm definitely looking forward to getting out there,' Stephens said of her next match, most likely in Rod Laver Arena, where she has not played this year.

She is at her best on the biggest stages, after all.

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