KEY BISCAYNE, Fla. -- Sloane Stephens' résumé lists her occupation as "tennis pro." The more accurate job description might be "magician."
Stephens, the 25-year-old U.S. Open champion, can make the ball purr like a kitten. She can put it in corners that seem unreachable. She's quick, but she appears not to strain at all, thanks to her silken movement and great anticipation. Her touch is so deft, she could play tennis with an egg instead of a ball.
For a long time, Stephens also had a striking talent for making herself disappear as a Grand Slam contender. Big wins would be followed by puzzling losses. Expectations would form and dissolve around her like summer clouds. She went through coaches like a magician goes through silk scarves.
Stephens disappeared again after that epic win in New York, but now she's back, perhaps for good.
This month, she reached the third round at Indian Wells, and on Thursday, she conjured Victoria Azarenka right out of the Miami Open. Thus, Stephens advanced to her first final in a WTA Premier Mandatory event. Stephens lost the first set, but she reached deep into her top hat and extracted a 3-6, 6-2, 6-1 win.
"She [Azarenka] came out playing really well; I knew I had to fight regardless of what happened last week," Stephens said, referring to her easy mastery of Azarenka at Indian Wells. Azarenka still is striving to find continuity in her comeback following childbirth in December 2016, but she had a 3-0 record against Stephens before this month.
Stephens also has been in comeback mode. She missed 11 months due to foot surgery and returned in late June and crafted a bewitching 15-2 summer run highlighted by her magical moment at the U.S. Open. After that, she struggled through the fall and very nearly disappeared again early this year.
"At the end of last season, I had to play, I wanted to play," Stephens said, reviewing her struggles of late 2017. "My heart was there, but my body was not."
She dedicated the offseason to becoming pain-free and getting into the best shape possible. It turned out to be not as good a shape as she had hoped. Many talked of a lingering slump as she lost two first-round matches in Australia and vanished, but she was unfazed: "The two losses were no big deal. If you're not 100 percent, you can't expect much."
Stephens played 18 matches in just over a month last summer, ending with her U.S. Open triumph. Kamau Murray, Stephens' coach since early 2016, feels the team made a strategic error after the U.S. Open.
"It's different if you win a Grand Slam when you weren't even thinking about it, like Sloane did," Murray told ESPN. "As a team, we never took a minute, or a step back, to assess what happened -- and where we go from there."
Stephens played on. She didn't want to be a quitter. She began to break down, but the team kept going.
"Maybe the message was, 'Shut it down,'" Murray said. "She should have forgotten about not wanting to cop out. She should have stopped."
The turnaround began for Stephens after her poor start in Australia almost three months ago. There was no flick of some mental switch or emotional jump-start.
"I just took the time go get myself together," Stephens said of her effort to readjust to life as a Grand Slam champ. "I had to make sure I was in a good place. I got back to my regular schedule: get up, have breakfast, read the news. I don't know, what normal people do. When you have a lot of clutter, you kind of get out of your structure. It messes up your vibe."
Stephens arrived in this final the hard way, with successive wins over three Grand Slam champions, starting in the third round: Garbine Muguruza, Angelique Kerber and Azarenka. But her most cherished moment at this tournament was her springboard win, a third-round triumph over unheralded WTA No. 70 Monica Niculescu -- a player who also has numerous tricks up her sleeve.
Stephens said the other day, "The real work is done on Court 75, and you're playing Niculescu and she's slicing and dicing you to Beijing. [It's when] you're having to really fight and struggle. You fight your tail off in those matches to be able to get to center court and play girls like that [the champions]."
On Saturday, expect Stephens to bring her full assortment of tricks to the final. Her vibe appears to be all good again.
