Top 10 Stories from the 2017 Australian Open

3. A Truly Inspirational Shock Semifinalist

Unlike Vandeweghe, Mirjana Lucic-Baroni is a universally-supported figure. She’s got a story that kind of demands it. She was once a teen prodigy, winning her first ever tour event at 15. What no one knew was she was being beaten regularly by her father. In 1998, she and her family fled him and their native Croatia for the United States. But even then he was able to deprive them of most of the prize money she’d won. To make matters worse, a deal with management company IMG went horribly wrong, resulting in an expensive legal battle. She made the semifinals of Wimbledon in 1999, but after that things went downhill. Beset by impossible financial and psychological problems, for years she was barely able to play.

Eventually she recovered things and returned to playing full time. But it was a long and hard road back to the top 100. And now, well into her thirties, it seemed her chance at further glory remained gone.

Here, Lucic-Baroni should’ve gone down in the second round to number three seed, Agnieska Radwanska. But instead she beat her handily. Her next two opponents weren’t as big, though she had to come back from a set down for the second time in the tournament her next match. In the quarterfinals she met rising star Karolina Pliskova. That one took her three sets, but she won it too, and was in the slam semifinals. Her reaction made clear how much it meant to her, as did her words: “This has truly made my life, and everything bad that has happened, it made it okay.”

Ultimately, however, she couldn’t beat Serena Williams, resulting in one of two finals that were a different kind of comeback…