Sloane Stephens acknowledged she had no idea how long she will continue to play professional tennis when she made this admission to the media last month during a press conference in Miami. The 31-year-old stated that she still had objectives to meet but mainly used the past tense when discussing her profession.
But Stephens demonstrated on Sunday that she is far from finished in the championship match of the first-ever WTA 250 Open Capfinances Rouen Metropole in France.
The 2017 US Open champion defeated Magda Linette 6-1, 2-6, 6-2 to win her eighth career title and her first in more than two years. She had defeated Caroline Garcia and Karolina Pliskova, two former top-10 players, to finish off an incredible week. She had gone undefeated in four matches leading up to the final, but in order to overcome Linette, she had to work hard and use six match points. In the end, she completed the task in two hours and ten minutes.
Though Stephens has long been recognized for her skill on the surface, she won her first victory on the red clay and her first indoors in 2018, when she made it to the French Open final.
“Coming here was kind of a last-minute decision, so I’m really happy to be through and win another title,” Stephens stated. “It’s my first title indoors, I think, so that’s really nice and really cool, and just a really nice way to start off the clay-court swing.”