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It has been two years since Bianca Andreescu played the US Open. And it has been five … eventful years since she came out of virtually nowhere to win it in 2019.

She’s back, faced with a tough ask against No. 5 seed Jasmine Paolini in the first round.

And the fascinating part of Andreescu’s return, in the big picture, is that she’s amongst an exclusive group of US Open champions competing this year who have been through something few of their peers can relate to.

With fresh perspective, Andreescu gives back to kids in NYC

Instant success on the world’s biggest stage – and a fork in the road to fame and pressure they’re forced to try to cope with.

Andreescu, currently ranked No. 167 and given a wild card by the USTA, joins 2018 and 2020 champion Naomi Osaka (No. 103, also on a wild card) and 2021 champion Emma Raducanu in the main draw.

They all play Tuesday: Osaka meets No. 10 seed Jelena Ostapenko, and Raducanu plays another former Grand Slam champ who’s had a rough road in 2020 Australian Open titlist Sofia Kenin.

They’ve all gotten premium court assignments, too.

Youngsters faced with instant fame

Andreescu was ranked No. 60 when she took a wild card to the title at Indian Wells in 2019. She was still 18 years old and by the time she got to the US Open, just turned 19, she’d won the Rogers Cup at home in Toronto, and was the No. 15 seed.

Osaka was 20 and ranked No. 19 when she won her first US Open in 2018 – and beating the icon Serena Williams in the final only added to the magnitude of the occasion.

Raducanu was still 18 when, ranked No. 150, she emerged from the qualifying to win the US Open without dropping a set.

It was jaw-dropping stuff. And she and her agency took that right to the bank in a major way.

You could arguably add Canadian Genie Bouchard to this list. She never won a major. But she reached the 2014 Wimbledon final as a 20-year-old – and the resulting attention and fame that far outstripped her actual accomplishments was a life-changer.

Mental health challenges

Of the four, only Osaka, who won three more majors after that including the 2020 US Open, sustained that success even as she grappled with her mental health in the wake of it.

Andreescu, too, had to battle that along with her health and the tough transition between being the hunter and the hunted. She’s taken numerous breaks to work on her mental health and to heal up a number of injuries. And she only returned this year at Roland Garros, after a 10-month absence.

Bouchard, who long proclaimed – at least publicly – that she was rolling along just fine, has recently come around to being more public about the aftermath of all that sudden renown.

There’s not much known about Raducanu, and how she has dealt with it. But the Brit, still only 21, had three surgeries last year and has taken a gradual approach to coming back on Tour.

Coming back this year, Osaka is determined to handle it all with a new attitude.

“I would say I made a promise to myself to be as confident as I can in the fact that I am who I am. I feel like, for me, throughout the year I have had really hard matches, and it kind of dipped my confidence a little. I wouldn’t say that I played bad tennis. I just would say that I played really good players, and I also learned a lot,” she said.

“I do think coming to this specific tournament helps me out. But also, whenever I step foot here, I don’t really think about the two tournaments I won. I just think about how I felt when I was a kid, because I did grow up coming here, and I have such vivid memories of watching my favorite players. It’s more of a childhood nostalgia that I really enjoy,” she added.

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Why not a group chat?

We dropped this theory on Andreescu during a telephone interview late last week, as she was in the car returning from a positive, life-affirming experience with the WTA Foundation’s community outreach program in a New York city park.

(The draw had just come out, but Andreescu asked to not be told or asked about who her first-round opponent would be, wanting just a few more hours of calm before she had to start thinking about it. Given how that draw shook out, we happily accommodated her).

How great would it be if these women got together to share experiences, vent and create an opportunity to speak openly and honestly to those rare few who have experienced something only a sacred few on either Tour have lived through?

Even just a group chat.

Andreescu wouldn’t be against it, even as she acknowledges the challenges.

“Yeah, I definitely feel like (that could) be beneficial at the end of the day. Nobody feels the way we feel. I can really relate to them, and they can relate to me as well. So there can be more of a camaraderie, I guess, off the court. It would definitely help us, but it will help also the game of tennis evolve in a different way. And just sports in general,” Andreescu said.

“But considering this is an individual sport, obviously it’s different. I’ve spoken to both of them on different occasions, but obviously it’s not an ongoing thing because it is tough. We have different schedules. We live in different places. But I think the more that it can happen, the better – for sure.”

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Taking that even a little further, in a perfect world they could all take those experiences and pay them forward, to the next group of young women who might soon find themselves in a similar situation.

“I love that. I love that. And I feel that in a way, it would definitely set a great example. I mean, you see Chrissie Evert and Martina Navratilova, they’ve had that on and off the court, and obviously after their career as well,” she said. “So if there can be more of that – I mean, I feel that, for instance, Paula Badosa and Aryna Sabalenka, that they have that going a little bit (together). And it shows a different vibe, for sure, in a good way.”