Through the first four months of the 2016 tennis season, Sloane Stephens had won three WTA titles and was being considered a contender for the French Open.
Then, at her first tournament on European clay in Madrid at the end of April, she received a call: Her grandmother had hadd a stroke.
“‘She’s not going to make it; you need to come and say goodbye,’” Stephens recalled hearing. She flew to her grandmother’s hometown, Fresno, Calif., as soon as she could.
Her grandmother, 86, pulled through, and Stephens soon went back to Europe to compete at a warm-up tournament in Strasbourg, France, and then the French Open.