Jennifer Brady took her time getting to the Big Time of women’s tennis.
The former UCLA Bruin was already 25 during her breakout year, when she suddenly made good on the promise of her natural gifts. In the summer of 2020, she won her first WTA title and streaked to the US Open semifinals, racing through the first five rounds without dropping a set and severely testing eventual champion Naomi Osaka before falling in three tough sets.
The Harrisburg, Pa. native backed up that performance with a run to the final of the next major, the Australian Open the next January. Brady was hovering just outside the Top 10, certain to keep climbing.
Then, just as quickly as things seemed to happen for Brady, her career unraveled.
This year's US Open is the first major and just the fourth tournament Brady has played in more than two years. The big-hitting American, now 28, was sidelined first with a chronic foot condition (for which she received cortisone and platelet-rich plasma injections), then a stress fracture in her right knee, followed by a partial tear in her left plantar fascia. Brady underwent knee surgery in March 2022 to repair cartilage damage but the foot pain remained.
The constant cycle of injuries left Brady desperate and made her question whether she'd ever play tennis again. Indeed, as she told The New York Times earlier this summer, so relentless was the pain in her foot that she sometimes wished she could "just chop it off."
Formerly No. 13 in the world, just two-and-a-half years ago, Brady is now down to No. 433–though she is playing the US Open with a protected ranking. After easily winning her opening round, Brady outlasted the 24th seed Magda Linette of Poland in three sets in the second. It marked the first time since the 2021 French Open that Brady had won two consecutive matches at any tournament. But Linette was the third Top 30 player Brady has defeated already this month.
The victory set up a third-round clash with another veteran on the comeback trail, the former world No. 1 Caroline Wozniacki of Denmark.
"It feels huge," Brady said this week in Flushing. "Last time I played a Grand Slam was, I mean, in 2021. Every tournament matters, but the Grand Slam is always something bigger."
Brady’s enormous talent has never really been in doubt. The 5-foot-10 American possesses among the most lethal one-two serve-and-forehand combos in the women's game. The former college standout has a live arm and a fluid, Pete Sampras-like service delivery. She winds up and blasts away at her topspin forehand.
Brady had planned to make her return to the WTA tour in May, at the French Open. Only days before departing for Paris, though, she was hobbled by a new injury: a bone bruise in her right foot.
Brady was finally able to take the court again just two months ago. She immediately registered first-round singles wins in Washington, D.C., and Montreal, where she saved two match points against 20th-ranked Jelena Ostapenko. In the next round against Elena Rybakina, the 2022 Wimbledon champion, Brady won the first set and had opportunities to close out the match in the second but couldn’t close the deal, losing 6-7(3), 7-6(5), 6-3.
That match, though, signaled to Brady that she was again ready to challenge the best players on tour. “I felt like my level was there. I mean, she's 4 in the world."
“I definitely missed this,” Brady told The Times earlier this summer. I didn’t think I would be as comfortable as I was. I’m happy I was able to show people that I’m still here."
"The toughest part is just not knowing when you're going to compete again," Brady said after her first-round win in Flushing. "The unknown is something that, you know, it's scary. You just never know when the first tournament is going to be, when you're back, if you're going to be able to continue playing […] or if you're going to have another setback."
"I think we take this sport for granted. I think we don't realize how good of an opportunity we have to be able to play tennis, to travel the world, you know, hitting a little fuzzy ball,” said Brady. “We're able to see things, to do things that other people may never do.”
Now 28, Brady is still in the early stages of her comeback. She has won just five matches on the year. But both Brady and her next opponent, Wozniacki–who decided to make a daring return after a nearly four-year break from the WTA Tour, when she gave birth to two children–have been able to shake off the rust surprisingly quickly.
For someone who couldn’t walk not so many months ago, Brady might want to avoid talk of taking the next step. But she doesn’t steer clear of the metaphors.
She just needs to focus on “keeping my foot on the gas and closing out matches and trusting my game, trusting my preparation,” she said earlier this week.
“It's not like I have drastic improvements to make. It's more, you know, the confidence in myself.”
In July, celebrating her first win after her long absence from tennis, at an ITF World Tennis Tour tournament in Granby, Canada, Brady succinctly captured her attitude in a post on Instagram: “About. Damn. Time.”