Shelby Rogers, tennis' humble giant-killer, lacks one thing on her resume. Could she find it at home?

WATCH: Shelby Rogers rallies past Danielle Collins in three sets

CHARLESTON, S.C.—“I think each match brings a new set of emotions and feelings,” Shelby Rogers told me Monday at the Credit One Charleston Open. She was in the process of describing the last time she played Danielle Collins, at last year’s French Open—a match Rogers won, 6-4, 6-3.

When Rogers, eminently focused over two hours and 11 minutes on a warm Tuesday afternoon, defeated Collins again—6-7 (2), 6-4, 6-1—we saw those emotions and feelings for the first time, but perhaps not the last, at her hometown tournament.

Steel gave way to a smile. Instead of signature shotmaking, there were signatures and camera shots. She had a tough time keeping it together during her on-court interview, noting the support she sees, hears and feels in this particular venue.

As talented as the 30-year-old South Carolinian is, there’s only one tournament she plays where she’s the headliner.

“It’s really humbling, and makes me just want to keep going, work harder and try to do the best that I can,” said Rogers. “And the kids that come up and say, you know, thank you for being the person that you are—which means more to me than anything I could do on court with tennis.”

Collins was the No. 9 seed in Paris; today in Charleston, she was seeded 13th. A cursory knowledge of draw sizes would indicate that Collins has dropped in the rankings, but not her propensity for explosive tennis at a moment’s notice.

The match between the 40th-ranked player in the world, Collins, and the 44th played out as the ranking suggested. They went to a coin-flip tiebreak to settle the first set, and after Rogers lost it, she evened the contest.

In the third, the emotions most often associated with Collins occasionally came out in Rogers, which pushed her through.

“Her serve was on fire today,” Rogers said about her opponent in the early going—but in the decider, it was the Mount Pleasant native who cracked two aces to end a lengthy deuce game.

“She can play super aggressive and hit a winner whenever she wants,” Rogers spoke of Collins. But at 4-1, it was Rogers who made a closing statement with a love break featuring two return winners.

“She’s such a fighter, and she’s going to come out tough—and I know that,” Rogers told me on Monday, effectively predicting what would happen on Tuesday.

Over the course of her career, Rogers has made a habit of punching above her weight. She’s never been ranked higher than 30th, but that hasn’t stopped her from defeating world No. 1 Ash Barty at the 2021 US Open, or Serena Williams in 2020—in a third-set tiebreaker, and in their only career meeting. She straight-setted Elena Rybakina on grass last summer, a result that looks astonishing in hindsight.

Rogers is a giant killer, but like always, she keeps the endless ups and downs of tour life in perspective.

“You can never really take too much over from past experiences, to what’s going to happen in the future,” Rogers says. “So we just try to treat it as a new match, a new day—anything could happen, right?”

If Rogers could choose anything to happen, in terms of tennis, one wish would surely be to raise a trophy. Only three players ranked ahead of Rogers similarly lack a tournament win, and all of them are younger.

Could that overdue breakthrough possibly happen here?

I asked Rogers about the pressure feels when competing on Daniel Island. While she acknowledged that it exists, it’s not from the source you’d expect.

“There’s nothing that Charleston hasn't seen me do on the court,” she said. “And so I’m at a place now where I feel I can just go out and be free, be myself, play my game.

“So I would say the pressure just comes from myself. You know, it doesn’t come from anyone off the court. And that’s just me wanting to perform and put on a good show for everyone.”