Sloane Stephens defeated Mathilde Johansson of France, 6-3, 6-2.
Mike Hewitt/Getty Images
In Face of Success and Scrutiny, a Rising American Star Hasn’t Flinched
By GREG BISHOP NY Times
Published: June 1, 2012
PARIS — Sloane Stephens is a character, an original, a mixture of philosopher and comedian and tennis player caught somewhere between teenager and adult. She is 19 years old and practically grown up, and with each victory, each step forward in development, she looks more like a potential star.
There is a burden that comes with that, of course, for whichever player eventually assumes the mantle of “best female American tennis player” from Serena Williams, next year or five years from now or however many years hence. But Stephens seems unaffected by that prospect, or by all the attention here, or by the questions about her deceased fathers and her race.
On Friday morning, she stepped onto Court Philippe Chatrier, center court at the French Open, and bludgeoned another opponent in straight sets to advance to the fourth round. Her 6-3, 6-2 victory, over Mathilde Johansson of France, for the most part seemed inevitable, and while the opponents will get tougher, the magnitude greater, Stephens hardly even smiled afterward. She walked off the court as if this were the outcome she had expected all along.
In the interview room, Stephens described the two biggest perks of her advancement: a first-class plane ticket back to the United States and a likely bump in Twitter followers. She talked about how she recently kicked her two-a-day orange Fanta habit. She showed off her necklace and called out her mother, Sybil Smith, who sat in the back.
“She’s an interesting girl,” Smith said. “That’s my Sloane. She came out this way.”
In victory, Stephens became the fourth American woman to reach the fourth round here since 2005, joining Serena and Venus Williams and Lindsay Davenport. Stephens also became the first unseeded American woman to survive the first week here since 2002.
Her fellow Americans Christina McHale and Varvara Lepchenko have advanced to the third round, so the competition for Olympic berths among the American women remained too close to call. McHale, ranked 36th, is the highest-ranked American woman left in the tournament.
Stephens preferred not to think about the selection criteria. “It’s too stressful,” she said. “It’s like, O.K., whatever.”
Smith said her daughter had always taken an unruffled approach to life. She took in large part after her mother. In her day, Smith was an all-American swimmer at Boston University in the late 1980s, a sprint freestyler who later became a psychologist.
Mother and daughter share the same facial expressions; the same calm, measured tone; the same graceful athleticism, albeit in different sports. “Spitting image,” said Roger Smith, Stephens’s coach.
Stephens knew less about her father, John, a running back for the New England Patriots and three other N.F.L. teams. They rekindled their relationship six years ago, mostly on the telephone, after the elder Stephens found out he had a degenerative bone disease.
He died in a car accident in 2009, during the United States Open. His death came two years after Stephens’s stepfather, who introduced her to tennis, died from cancer.
Looking back, Sybil Smith noted her daughter’s “mental fortitude,” as strong then as it is now. “She’s resilient,” Smith said. “She’s incredibly resilient.”
Roger Smith said he had watched Stephens mature in recent years, in part from “the trauma that she went through” and also through getting older and gaining experience.
On a recent trip to Barcelona, however, Stephens seemed overwhelmed. “I was being 19,” she said. “Now, I’m being 29.” Her mother flew to Spain, as did her aunt, Kalen Wright, who works for the Charlotte Bobcats.
Stephens has stopped drinking soda and cut down on her candy consumption. Her grandparents gave her a silver necklace with a heart pendant inscribed with the phrase “In calmness and confidence.” In the first week of this tournament, she displayed both.
Stephens showcased a baseline style that appeared more aggressive than in the past, a result, her coach said, of her maturation — along with, perhaps, her propensity to read books on leadership.
In a news conference, Stephens fielded the usual question about how the Williams sisters must have inspired her as an African-American. She said that race had nothing to do with it, that they inspired her, period, and that she decorated the walls of her bedroom with posters of them.
“That’s Sloane in a nutshell right there,” Roger Smith said. “That’s her outlook on a lot of things. Such a measured response. She appreciates all the questions about the Williams sisters. She and Serena have become friends. But she was just a kid when they started.”
In the fourth round, Stephens is scheduled to face Samantha Stosur of Australia, the sixth seed here and the 2011 United States Open champion. Stephens’s goal, Roger Smith said, was to make it to the second week here. Check.
The women’s singles draw has unfolded in a predictably unpredictable manner. Also Friday, Maria Sharapova crushed Ayumi Morita of Japan in a second-round match that had been postponed the day before. In four sets so far, the second-seeded Sharapova has lost four games. Yet both Williams sisters have already lost, and Agnieszka Radwanska, the third seed, lost Friday.
Stephens, meanwhile, told her coach that she planned to buy a Louis Vuitton purse here while she needled her mother about the car she had yet to receive, as promised, after last year’s United States Open.
“Oh, my God,” Stephens said. “Can someone please talk to my mom? She’s over there. She still hasn’t got me one.”
Her mother shrugged. That’s her Sloane.
