Shelby Rogers, WTA No. 108, into fourth round with unlikely 6-0, 6-7, 6-0 win over Kvitova

We’ve seen this before. Two years ago at the Rogers Cup in Montreal, Shelby Rogers constructed a “bagel sandwich” in defeating crowd favorite Eugenie Bouchard, 6-0, 2-6, 6-0. Rogers, then a 113th-ranked qualifier, wasn’t content to reach the main draw of a significant tournament; she went out and shocked a Top 10 seed.

As the English love to say in French, déjà vu: On Friday at Roland Garros, Rogers, currently 108th in the world, stunned No. 10 seed Petra Kvitova by the unbelievably strange score of 6-0, 6-7 (3) 6-0.

We’ve also seen this before with Kvitova, a two-time Wimbledon champion who remains one of the sport's most unreliable players. Given her achievements, the Czech has earned a lifetime pass as a threat to win any tournament she plays, but she's now lost in the first week of a major for the second time this season. In her last 14 Grand Slam tournaments, Kvitova has fallen before the fourth round 10 times.

Could we have seen this coming? It depends who you ask:

Rogers entered the French Open without much momentum; her last win at the WTA level came at Indian Wells, against 74th-ranked Mariana Duque Marino. Since then, she went 3-7 in all contests, including WTA, ITF and qualifying matches.

But the Charleston, S.C. native has flipped a switch in Paris. A direct entrant in the main draw, she opened with a three-set win over No. 17 seed Karolina Pliskova, and then ousted world No. 49 Elena Vesnina in straights. Against Kvitova, Rogers didn’t simply let the erratic Czech implode—though there certainly patches of that—but took control of the match with her own shots. That’s not as surprising when you consider that Rogers’ home base is the Family Circle Tennis Center, where green clay is the court of choice. It’s a distinctly different surface than the terre battue at Roland Garros, but it’s not exactly a foreign language for the 24-year-old, either.

“I grew up playing on those courts, on the green clay; I was a ball girl for the (Family Circle Cup) tournament, so it always had a special place in my heart,” Rogers told Tennis Channel after her second-round victory over Vesnina.

As for Kvitova, no matter you slice it, this is a terrible loss to take. While Rogers’ forehand ruled this day, Kvitova’s left-handed strike—when it’s clicking—is perhaps one of the sport’s 10 best shots, not to mention her lethal, sliding wide serve. But it always seems to be more than physical when it comes to Kvitova. As gifted as she is from that perspective, she can mentally collapse when things aren’t going her way. She won just 28 of 50 points played on her first serve; as a comparison, Rogers won 35 of 50. For Kvitova not hold even once in the first and third sets against a player ranked outside the Top 100 is tennis' equivalent of Leicester City winning the Premier League.

When Kvitova swatted the last of her 36 unforced errors, Rogers let her racquet fall and raised her arms high. She is into the fourth round of a Grand Slam tournament for the first time and will face Irina Camelia-Begu, another unlikely success story in an unpredictable WTA season.

The American remains the decided underdog, even with her three victories in Paris thus far, but even if her tournament ends, the legend of Shutout Shelby lives on.