After topping cancer, American teen earns US Open qualifier invite
At 19, Vicky Duval is looking to make a triumphant return to the US Open. More impressively, Duval can also tell people that she is a cancer survivor.
Duval recently returned to tennis following a year-long battle against Hodgkin's lymphoma, which she was diagnosed with in 2014 while playing in qualifying matches for that year's Wimbledon Championships. Duval had played her way into Wimbledon's main draw and won her first-round match before she was forced to step away from tennis to treat her cancer.
According to The Guardian, Duval subsequently underwent five cycles of chemotherapy and was pronounced cancer-free in September of 2014, but she had to work hard to get her body -- destroyed by the chemotherapy -- back into playing shape. Duval told The Guardian she received a lot of support from Venus Williams, who kept her career going despite being diagnosed with an autoimmune disease in 2011.
"[Williams] didn't really give me advice," Duval told The Guardian. "She would just ask how I was doing and tell me to keep my head up. Hang in there and you'll get out of it alive."
Duval is more than alive. The teenager returned to tennis by winning two matches in a small singles tournament in Pennsylvania last week, and on Tuesday, the United States Tennis Association awarded Duval one of 16 wild-card entries for the qualifying round of this year's U.S. Open. Duval will be one of 128 female qualifiers battling for the remaining 16 main-draw entries at Flushing Meadows.
Duval turned heads at the 2013 US Open with a first-round upset of 2011 champion Sam Stosur.
And while Duval is young and has been out of the game for a while, she is keeping her dreams lofty.
"I want to be top 10 in the world and that's still something I'm confident I'll achieve," Duval told The Guardian. "It's going to be a longer process because of what I've been through but achievable."
(h/t The Guardian)
