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Meet Jennifer Brady, one of the unlikeliest Americans still in the Aussie draw

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Meet Jennifer Brady, one of the unlikeliest Americans still in the Aussie draw

Meet Jennifer Brady, one of the unlikeliest Americans still in the Aussie draw

MELBOURNE, Australia -- American qualifier Jennifer Brady concedes most players probably don't know who she is, but her upset results and stirring escapes since then have made her impossible to ignore.

Laughing now, Brady says she's had to extend her hotel reservation twice during an unexpected run to the rd of 16 that has startled even her. When told she's doubled her career earnings too in the last week, Brady laughed and said, "I didn't know that. Thanks for sharing.

"I probably won't know how it feels until I get the check or see the wire transfer."

Brady, a second year pro, arrived in Melbourne with only two career wins on the WTA main tour, a total she's already succeeded with her three wins at Melbourne Park in the last week. When asked to catch everyone up on her life story, Brady shrugged and insisted, "Yeah, I mean, there's not a whole lot to tell," before rattling off how she was born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and moved to Florida as a kid. She currently resides and trains at the USTA site in Orlando after spending two years playing for UCLA, and some time at the Evert Academy before that.



Brady may have been confident enough to joke about Chris Evert's tweets of support, claiming "Oh yeah, we're real tight," but she sounds downright shy again when asked if she's run into her idol Roger Federer.

"Yeah, no, I mean, I'd get too nervous," Brady stammered.

Nevertheless, she hasn't looked rattled on the court.


Since winning her way into the main draw with three wins in qualifying, Brady has beaten Belarus's Maryna Zaneviska, and then saved five match points to upset Britain's Heather Watson in their cliffhanger second-round match. Their 10-8 final set alone took 86 minutes to complete.

Brady next stunned 14th-seeded Russian Elena Vesnina to advance to Monday's unlikely quarterfinal pairing opposite former teenage prodigy Mirjana Lucic-Baroni, who is also unseeded.

Good as Brady's tear has been, Lucic-Baroni's backstory may be even more remarkable. Before this week, the 34-year-old hadn't won a match at Melbourne Park since her Australian Open debut in 1998, when she won the women's doubles title with Martina Hingis. The next year, as a 17-year-old, Lucic beat Monica Seles on the way to the 1999 Wimbledon semis, where she lost to Steffi Graf.

Shortly afterward, however, she and her mother left their native Croatia to escape from her father, Marinko, whom Lucic has called abusive. She has lived in the United States since, but her tennis career was interrupted for years.

With her first win here Lucic-Baroni snapped a 19-year wait between match wins at a Grand Slam tournament, breaking the record previously held by Japan's Kimiko Date-Krumm, who went 17 years between wins at Wimbledon .

Brady was only 2 years old when Lucic-Baroni's Slam drought started.

In a way, it will be Cinderella vs. Cinderella Monday when the two meet.

"One of my goals, actually, was in the next couple years to be playing in the second week of a Grand Slam," Brady said. "I sat down and had that discussion with my coaches and, you know, the rest of my team a couple months ago. ... But I didn't say it confidently."

Now look: Brady laughed good-naturedly when teased about even claiming to have a "team," acknowledging that's new for her, too, but "I didn't know what else to say except 'team.' Everyone says 'team.' So I just went with the flow."

Why change now?
 
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