By Erin Bruehl, USTA.com

There was the dog running out in front of her motor scooter, slamming the brakes and then the crash landing over the handlebars. Shock and pain quickly followed and then a trip to the emergency room with the fate of a very promising tennis career potentially hanging in the balance.

In short, it is a day back in November 2005 that Alexa Glatch remembers quite well.

The results of the accident were a broken left elbow and a fractured right wrist that kept her off the tennis court for eight months, just shortly after she turned 16. She had recently turned professional and had signed a big endorsement contract with Nike.

It was a long, painful process back onto the tennis court that almost did not happen at all.

But now Glatch, 19, is sure glad it did, as she recently reached her highest career ranking, helped lead the U.S. Fed Cup Team to its first final since 2003 and is now playing some of the best tennis of her career. She is literally armed with loads of talent , and she is now about to play in her first career French Open main draw.

The bad news about her injuries started after Glatch made it back to her home in Newport Beach, Calif. Her father saw her bleeding and immediately took her to the emergency room, where she was initially told she just had a broken left elbow that would heal in about four to six weeks and a sprained right wrist.

The news was relieving but a few weeks later – and after starting to hit a few balls with her right arm – she was still in pain. An MRI this time revealed a fractured scaphoid bone – a very dangerous one to break and an injury that was very close to ending her career.

“They told me it could have disassociated – split in half – and my tennis career would have been over. It was pretty scary actually,” Glatch recalled. “I had to have a bone scan to make sure it was still intact, and then I had to decide whether to have surgery and put a pin it or just go with the cast and hopefully it would heal because sometimes this injury never heals. I went with the cast, and it ended up healing, but I was in a cast almost 16 weeks.

“The doctor said I was really, really lucky that it did not disassociate and it was still intact and that I had a good chance of healing because I was pretty young and fit. I just feel pretty lucky to be able to play now at this level.”

The 16 weeks began pretty miserably, especially for a young, professional athlete. Glatch was unable to really move the elbow or wrist for about four to six weeks. Her days now consisted mostly of just sitting on the couch, barely able to even lift a fork, and she was unable to write, do her homework or really do much of anything.

“Once I started getting some movement in my left elbow, I was able to ride the stationary bike a little. That was basically my only form of exercise,” she said. “The sling started coming off, but I still had the cast on my right arm. The bike was really my only means of exercise until I started practicing.”

But after 16 weeks in a cast, her once powerful right arm – she is right-handed – looked nothing like it used to. Her muscles had atrophied from lack of use and felt dead. Then came lots of hand therapy, first for her elbow and then for her wrist – just trying to regain some movement at first. From there, trying to pick up her game again felt like the beginning.

“I still continued to do therapy, even when I started practicing again,” she said. “The first time I practiced it felt like I never played tennis before. I was so weak, I could barely hit the ball. It was re-learning everything all over again. I still don’t have the same movement I did before the accident. I can’t bend it as far back as I used to, and the fingers don’t move as far back.”

It was a tough break for such an up-and-coming young talent at the time, having recently had some of the best results of her career, including reaching the second round of the 2005 US Open just before her 16th birthday in her first career Grand Slam singles main-draw appearance.

Glatch played in her first tournament post-accident in June 2006 at a $10,000 USTA Pro Circuit event in Fort Worth, Texas. For the event, she was looking for someone in the area to hit and practice with, and the coach at TCU recommended Kevin O’Neill, who had been working with the TCU girls’ program and had recently moved to Fort Worth.

Despite feeling weak, Glatch won the tournament, but it took awhile before her old form began to surface. O’Neill worked with her again at a tournament in Forest Hills later that summer and at the US Open and is still her coach to this day.

“It took awhile to feel back to normal," Glatch said. "It was another year or two before I felt I could really play tennis again. I was not playing well, but somehow I managed to win (the tournament in Fort Worth). I tried to play a tournament the next week, but I got injured. Then I had a bunch of injuries after that – I think because I was not used to playing, and I was not really fit yet, so that slowed the process down, as well. Then I lost some confidence again. It was just kind of the same thing over and over again for almost two years.”

She did not really start to feel back to playing at a high level until she won a $25,000 event in South Lake, Texas, in July 2007.

But it was at that first tournament in Fort Worth where he met her that O’Neill saw just how much potential and talent Glatch had. Things were up and down the first few years, but things have really come full-circle for her now.

“The first tournament in Fort Worth, when I saw her play and spent some time around her, watching her matches, I told her dad, ‘Your daughter has top-20 potential. She has a lot of talent, and it's just a matter of when it is coming out.’ I remember telling him,” O’Neill said. “I told him, ‘I think at about 20, 21 she is really going to start turning a big corner and establishing herself in the top 50 and having a real chance of making a career as a professional player.’”

And now at age 19 (she will turn 20 in September), O’Neill’s predictions are coming to fruition. Glatch reached her career-high ranking of No. 111 in the world in April and is now ranked No. 117 after a fantastic start to 2009.

She won her fifth career singles title on the USTA Pro Circuit in January at the $25,000 event in Laguna Nigel, Calif., and followed that with success on the WTA Tour, reaching the third round at the prestigious tournament in Indian Wells, which included a victory over No. 29 seed Carla Suarez Navarro, and the second round in Miami, where she fell to Serena Williams.

Things really started clicking for Glatch in 2008, and O’Neill really began to see some changes, including more aggressiveness on the court from her and effective use of some of her best shots, including a fantastic slice.

“Early on, after I started working with her full-time, there were some roller-coaster moments. She would have a couple good wins, then lose some matches, have some good wins and lose some matches,” O’Neill said. “The biggest thing I saw was she had learned how to be a more aggressive player, using her physical skills much more than she did.

“She has an unbelievable slice, but she used it too much, and she has an unbelievable two-handed backhand off that side, too, but she didn’t use it as much. I was trying to get her to use that more and worked a lot on her forehand," he added. "I’d say since June of last year, she has really started being more aggressive, coming forward, looking to dictate the point, and it is starting to pay off for her. Now she is getting more confidence in herself.”

In August 2008, Glatch qualified for her fourth US Open main-draw appearance and went on to win a $50,000 event in Toronto and a $50,000 event in Saguenay in back-to-back weeks in October. She also won the doubles title with Christina Fusano at the $50,000 event in San Diego in November.

“The US Open was big for me,” she said. “I had my best results in Indian Wells, getting to the third round, beating Suarez Navarro – that was pretty exciting. Then in Miami, as well, getting to the second round and getting to play Serena – that was pretty cool. It has just kind of been coming together.

“I think overall I am probably a better player,” she said of her present game vs. pre-accident. “A lot of things have improved since then. I can’t really remember how I played all the way back then, but I think overall I am a much better player now."

While she was in Miami, her agent informed her there was a good chance she would be selected for the U.S. Fed Cup Team’s semifinal tie against the Czech Republic. Glatch had never played on the U.S. team before, and she heard from U.S. Fed Cup Captain Mary Joe Fernandez while she was at the WTA Tournament in Ponte Vedra Beach.

Fernandez did select Glatch for the team, along with Liezel Huber, Bethanie Mattek-Sands and Melanie Oudin. Huber and Oudin had played in the U.S.’s quarterfinal win over Argentina, but both Glatch and Mattek-Sands were Fed Cup rookies.

The U.S. went to the Czech Republic as an underdog against a solid Czech team with no singles player ranked outside the top 50 in the world, pitted against a U.S. team with just one singles player – Mattek-Sands – ranked in the top 100.

Fernandez nominated Glatch as the team’s No. 2 singles player behind Mattek-Sands, and the 19-year-old stepped up in a huge way. With the U.S. down 1-0 after the first singles rubber, Glatch faced then-world No. 29 Iveta Benesova.

O’Neill had confidence in Glatch, knowing if she played an aggressive game, she could win. And did she ever.

The rankings between the two players easily looked reversed, as Glatch dominated Benesova to even the tie at 1-1 with a 6-1, 6-2 victory.

The next day Lucie Safarova defeated Mattek-Sands for a 2-1 Czech lead, and when Glatch took the court against Petra Kvitova, it was potentially the deciding rubber. If Kvitova won, the U.S. would be eliminated.

But Glatch performed as brilliantly as she did the day before, dictating the pace of play and taking control early, as well as mixing in that great slice to win, 6-2, 6-1. Huber and Mattek-Sands went on to win the doubles rubber and put the U.S. in its first Fed Cup final since 2003. But much of the credit goes to Glatch’s sensational performance over the weekend.

“Alexa was the MVP,” Fernandez said after the tie. “She really brought her best game, and I think she has a very bright future.”

Glatch once played on the U.S. Junior Fed Cup Team for 14-and-unders, which was also in the Czech Republic. Although the U.S. team lost on outdoor clay back then, the experience of playing on a team was very special and even more so this time.

“I was going out there expecting a fight,” Glatch said of her second Fed Cup match. “Mary Joe was out there, and she helped me a lot, which was pretty awesome. I had never had a coach on the court while I was playing. That was a big help to me. I just tried to stay calm and play my game and not worry about anything else.

“It is a pretty cool feeling. I had never played on a team like that before,” she added. “I wish we could do this more often. It is a lot of fun and something totally different from what I am used to.”

In terms of goals for this year, after the French Open, Glatch hopes to make the main draw at Wimbledon (it would be her first main-draw appearance there), then the main draw at the US Open and crack the top 100 or top 90 at least by the end of the year.

And while Glatch plays an aggressive, powerful game of tennis with a strong serve and is an imposing physical presence to some other players at nearly six feet tall, her personality both on and off the court could not be more opposite to her game style. She is quiet, soft-spoken and calm as both a player and a person and rarely displays emotion on the court when things are going well or going badly.

It is something that O’Neill thinks will only continue to help Glatch in her career, in which there are seemingly few limits with her combination of talent, personality and hard work.

“With her personality, in big situations, she likes to be out on the court,” he said. “She beat Suarez Navarro by being aggressive, but she was calm and patient with herself, too. She is very positive. She never hung her head if she missed an easy shot. She was right back, ready to play the next point. She has been really good at staying in the present.

“She is really buying into being a more aggressive player, using her serve. I think she is going to keep getting better," O'Neill added. "She has continued to improve, gotten some pretty good wins – some good confidence-building type wins. In a lot of ways, I think the sky is the limit. My prediction when I first started working with her – top 20 – I think for sure that is totally within reach for her.”