America likes to fancy itself the land of second possibilities. Show some humility. Work arduous. A brand new you, or maybe a greater model of the previous you, is simply across the nook.

So maybe it’s becoming that comebacks have featured so prominently within the first days of the U.S. Open. Some have gone effectively — Caroline Wozniacki, Elina Svitolina, Stan Wawrinka, Jennifer Brady. Others — Venus Williams, who suffered a gap evening drubbing — not a lot.

What binds them collectively although, is the seemingly irresistible pull of a sport and a life that so many gamers complain about however in the end battle to say goodbye to, figuring out that when the door locks fully, because it does for everybody finally, there isn’t any approach to unlock the pathway to the worldwide glamour, fame and cash of their former life.

“It’s the competition,” stated Brady, 28, who’s rediscovering her form following two injury-plagued and mentally grueling 12 months. “You just can’t replicate it.”

That’s not all. On Thursday, there was the 38-year-old Wawrinka within the fading mild of Court 17, which is a type of tennis bullring, rolling again the years to a time earlier than foot surgical procedures appeared to spell the tip. He had simply dispatched Tomas Etcheverry, who’s 14 years his junior in 4 gritty units, rallying the capability crowd of two,800 which had been screaming for him all afternoon. He stirred them like an orchestra conductor, urging every financial institution of stands to get louder to earn their post-match, memento ball.

“I like the emotion I get from tennis,” Wawrinka stated later. “I also know the day I stop I will never find those emotions anywhere.”

Friday afternoon’s third spherical delivered a tense, three-set battle between dueling comeback tales, as Wozniacki, 33, a former world No. 1 enjoying her first Grand Slam following a three-year, two-pregnancy retirement, outlasted Brady.

It was the second time in three days that Wozniacki had discovered the previous magic in Arthur Ashe Stadium, the place she had her breakout run to the her first Grand Slam last 14 years in the past. On Wednesday, she topped an previous rival and two-time Wimbledon champion, Petra Kvitova, in two tight units beneath the lights. On Friday, she got here again from a set down towards Brady, an Australian Open finalist in 2021, successful 12 of the ultimate 14 video games. She stated three years in the past she by no means thought she can be competing on this court docket once more, a lot much less successful.

“What an honor this is,” she stated Friday.

It is becoming that Wawrinka and Wozniacki are clicking as soon as extra right here. This is the match the place Jimmy Connors went on his storied run to the semifinals in 1991 when he was 39. It’s the place, in 2009, Kim Clijsters, took a wild-card entry and in simply her second match again after a two-year break received the singles title.

The enduring picture of that evening was Clijsters’s toddler daughter running across the court during the trophy ceremony. Her opponent in that last — Wozniacki.

If ever there was a participant that appeared accomplished for good, Wozniacki was it.

She had been enjoying virtually her whole life. She had fulfilled her childhood desires of reaching the highest of the rankings and in 2018 successful a Grand Slam match title on the Australian Open. She had received $35 million in prize cash and earned tens of hundreds of thousands extra in endorsements.

When Wozniacki left the sport in 2020, she had spent the earlier two years battling ​rheumatoid arthritis, a power inflammatory illness that typically left her joints so swollen she struggled to get off the bed. She and her husband, David Lee, a retired N.B.A. participant, have been elevating their two kids in Florida, and Wozniacki had grow to be a mainstay of tennis tv commentary.

The Wozniacki’s have at all times been an intense sports activities household. Her father performed soccer for Denmark and Poland and her mom performed volleyball for Poland. For Wozniacki, a health freak, tennis was a career but in addition a cardio exercise. But she didn’t play for thus lengthy throughout her non permanent retirement that when the day arrived that she needed to hit some balls she had no concept the place her rackets have been.

The ball began coming off her strings as soundly as she felt it ever had.

“I realized that, yes, I love playing tennis,” she stated. “I love to play the game, I’m very passionate about it, and I want to be the best I possibly can be.”

Pretty quickly she was floating the concept of a comeback to her father, who has at all times been her coach, and her husband, who basically stated, ‘why not, you only live once.’ Now right here she is in New York, with the children in tow, taking her 3-year-old daughter, Olivia, to a park close to her resort within the morning, and competing for one of many largest titles within the sport within the afternoon and night. On off days she has been going to museums.

“Pretty cool that I get to live my passion and be a mom and kind of wear many hats,” she stated Friday after one more win in a Grand Slam after so a few years of them.

There are, after all, alternative ways to go a couple of comeback. Svitolina, who’s from Ukraine and like Wozniacki had a toddler final 12 months, tried to stay match via her being pregnant. Then she spent three months after childbirth reworking her game with a brand new coach, Raemon Sluiter.

She performed a collection of smaller tournaments within the spring as she ready for top-level tennis and set few expectations for rapid success, particularly given how a lot vitality she was spending elevating cash for reduction efforts in Ukraine. In June, Svitolina made the quarterfinals of the French Open and in July she made the semifinals of Wimbledon. She and her husband, Gael Monfils, have left their daughter at dwelling in Europe.

Wozniacki, alternatively, took the go-big-or-go-home strategy, starting her comeback on the two huge U.S. Open tuneup tournaments in Montreal and outdoors Cincinnati, then enjoying the 12 months’s last Grand Slam with simply three post-comeback matches. She wrote in Vogue that she believed she might win the U.S. Open.

Ultimately, many of the finest tennis gamers come to grasp that they aren’t merely athletes but in addition performers and entertainers. Once they make that leap, they start to attract vitality not simply from the act of competing but in addition the suggestions loop skilled by doing the factor they’ve accomplished from the time they have been very small, to the exclusion of almost another pursuit, in entrance of 1000’s of individuals.

It turns into a type of drug, and the repair isn’t obtainable from merely enjoying a number of pleasant units in a quiet park. Anyone can do this.

“I love playing in front of a big crowd,” Wozniacki stated Friday. “I love playing on the big stadiums. That’s exciting to me. That’s why I’m still playing. It’s a great feeling.”