#tbt: Bianca Andreescu’s US Open qualifying defeat sets stage for 2019 triumph

WATCH: Tennis Channel Live breaks down Bianca Andreescu's return to action.

Fortunes can change quickly in tennis, and few illustrate the rollercoaster nature of the current era of women’s tennis quite like Bianca Andreescu.

The Canadian was unknown to many a US Open fan at the start of the 2019 tournament, largely because she wasn’t even in the main draw a year prior. Like fellow national treasure Drake, Andreescu indeed started from the bottom, playing qualies on Court 4 as the undercard to an in-form Olga Danilovic.

A member of Andreescu’s Gen Z cohort, Danilovic took part in the first WTA final between women born after the year 2000, defeating Anastasia Potapova to win the one and only Moscow River Cup on clay earlier that summer. Andreescu was known in small circles as her country’s next big hope, but Danilovic was already a star.

"It’s New York," she told me as a throng of autograph-seeking fans waited on her in the tunnel. "Come on. I don’t need to say anything else, just that it’s New York, and everything is amazing here."

The left-handed Serb is the daughter of basketball star Predrag "Sasha" Danilovic, and won all the key points in a 6-3, 7-5 victory over an out-of-sorts Andreescu.

I wasn't going through a good period in my life at that point. I was having problems with some relationships in my life, with my body, and even my mind, too. I was playing 25Ks, I remember, 60Ks in Canada before the qualies of the US Open. But I'm glad I went through it because at one point you have to. I think I just learned a lot. I'm really glad with how everything is piling up with me. Bianca Andreescu

"It was an amazing experience to win a title, but life goes on," Danilovic said with a breezy tone. "This is an amazing tournament here at the US Open, so I’m just trying to show my best like I did in Moscow. So far, it's going good."

We would only get Andreescu’s side of the story a year later, in the midst of her unforgettable 2019 season. Ranked outside the Top 100 in January, she rolled into her first WTA final in Auckland and blized the BNP Paribas Open field. Months later, she maintained that momentum in spite of injuries to win her home title in Toronto.

“I wasn't going through a good period in my life at that point,” she would recall once she returned to New York. “I was having problems with some relationships in my life, with my body, and even my mind, too. I was playing 25Ks, I remember, 60Ks in Canada before the qualies of the US Open.

“But I'm glad I went through it because at one point you have to. I think I just learned a lot. I'm really glad with how everything is piling up with me.”

While Andreescu headlined that year’s main draw and ultimately stunned 23-time Grand Slam champion Serena Williams to win her first major title, Danilovic wasn’t in New York at all, opting instead to play one of those ITF 60Ks—in Switzerland, where she won the title —due to her low ranking.

Besides a brief stint in the Top 100 windfall one might of expected from the now-21-year-old hasn’t quite happened. Returning to form in 2021, she credited mentorship from Novak Djokovic en route to a maiden major main-draw victory in Australia and she at last qualified for the US Open last summer only for a virus to cancel a second-round clash with Naomi Osaka.

Back in US Open qualies this week after reaching her second WTA final in Lausanne, she lost her first round from match point up against Lizette Cabrera.

But fortunes can change quickly, and no one knows that better than Bianca Andreescu, who will look to reclaim her own US Open magic as she arrives unseeded to New York after years of injury and mental health struggles. For Danilovic, this year’s disappointment may well be next year’s triumph.

The two haven’t faced off since that evening encounter in New York; may their next match-up occur under more auspicious circumstances.