WHAT HAPPENED: Shelby Rogers has struck again.
The engineer of one of the more dramatic upsets of the 2020 US Open, when she saved four match points to take out No. 6 seed Petra Kvitova in the Round of 16, has produced another brilliant episode of Shelby shocks.
On Saturday night, Rogers toppled top-seeded Ashleigh Barty, 6-2, 1-6, 7-6, in Arthur Ashe Stadium to earn her first career victory over a reigning world No. 1 and book a return to the second week of the 2021 US Open.
Barty, the reigning Wimbledon champion, drops to 14-3 in three-setters in 2021. The Aussie held a 5-2 double-break lead late in the third set before Rogers stormed back to take the victory.
How would the 28-year-old South Carolina native explain her incredible comeback?
“I’m not sure I can,” she said.
Chalk it up to resilience. Rogers could have very easily hung her head against an elite force that has owned the pair’s head-to-head over the years—and especially in 2021—but the American, buoyed by the feverish energy of the Arthur Ashe Stadium faithful, soldiered on late in the third set despite being down and out. From 5-2 down she won 12 of 16 points to erase the double-break deficit then kept pressuring Barty down the stretch.
“Just fighting for every point. That’s so cliché,” she said to the crowd, adding: “You guys are awesome, I didn’t want to leave, I just said ‘Make balls, try to stay in this match. It can’t get any worse, you’ve lost to her every time, so try something different.’”
After falling behind 6-5 in the deciding set, Barty did manage to hold serve and force a tiebreaker, but by then the momentum had shifted too dramatically for her to stem the tide. The pair were in lockstep at 5-all in the tiebreak but Rogers pushed through, taking the final two points as the crowd erupted.
It was pure bedlam, unlike Rogers’ victory over Kvitova in 2020, which was played with no spectators in attendance due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Rogers says she was able to change the course of the match by varying her spins and pace to take Barty out of her rhythm. It was a crafty tactic for the world No. 43, who is generally thought of as a straight-up power player.
“I was just trying to stay in the point longer than Ash,” Rogers told the crowd. “She was handling my pace really well tonight, I feel like the harder I hit the ball, the better she hit, so I tried to throw in some high ones. That is definitely not the way I like to play, but it’s what I needed to do tonight. So I was happy with myself for problem-solving."
WHAT IT MEANS: If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.
Rogers entered the contest with no wins in her five previous meetings with Barty, including four losses against the Aussie in 2021. Now she’s got the biggest win of her career and a shot to reach the quarterfinals.
Rogers will face British qualifier Emma Raducanu, one of three 18-year-old players still alive in this year’s US Open, next.
Barty, who was bidding to join Evonne Goolagong and Samantha Stosur as the third Australian woman to win the US Open singles title, drops to 42-8 on the season. She has very little to be distraught over. The Ipswich, Australia, native has been a model of consistency in 2021, and leads the WTA Tour in titles (five), match victories (42), finals (six), and Top 10 wins (seven).
MATCH POINT: Rogers earns her second Top-5 victory and her first victory over a reigning No.1. She improves to 13-7 lifetime at the US Open.
