Careers which are reprised rarely go well. Most of the time, past glories remain in the past, and those men and women who continue to chase it usually come up short.

But sometimes, the glory comes back. Maybe not right away, maybe it’s a struggle, but the exalted place the athlete was at previously is returned to.

Jiske Griffioen was once at the peak of her sport. She was No. 1 in the world in women’s wheelchair tennis, a titan in the tradition of Esther Vergeer and the current dominant player, Diede de Groot. Griffioen had it all, accomplished so much, and then walked way, content, in 2017.

“I thought I would never come back to tennis, ever,” she said.

And yet here she was at the US Open on Thursday, winning a quarter-final singles match and a quarter-final doubles showdown with De Groot, and now this woman who a few years ago thought she was finished is right back in the mix at Grand Slams.

As the No. 3 seed, on Friday she’ll play No. 2 seed Yui Kamiji and try to reach a Slam final for the second time this year. Kamiji had defeated Griffioen four times at the majors before the Dutchwoman prevailed in their semi-final on No. 1 Court at Wimbledon in July.

“I’ve definitely surpassed what my first ambition was when I came back,” Griffioen said at Billie Jean King National Tennis Center on Thursday.

“My first ambition was to just get back into the Slams again, just get into the draws. So to be here fighting for semis and finals and titles, that’s more than I would have hoped for.”

Just in 2023, Griffioen reached the women's singles final at Wimbledon before losing to doubles partner and Dutch compatriot De Groot, and made the semi-finals at Roland Garros and in Melbourne at the Australian Open.

Griffioen, now 38, had an outstanding professional career in wheelchair tennis first time around in the sport.

Originally from Woerden, Netherlands, where she still lives, Griffioen powered her way through a 16-year pro career.

She won four women’s singles Grand Slam titles, capturing the Australian Open and Roland Garros in 2015, then grabbing two more majors with the Australian Open crown and Wimbledon title in 2016. She also was dominant in wheelchair doubles, winning 16 Slam crowns.

Griffioen retired at the end of 2017 having won 59 singles titles and 106 doubles titles.

But soon after retiring, she began hitting “for fun” and then the Dutch Federation asked her to be a hitting partner for some players.

“And I started doing that and I thought, ‘oh, maybe I’m still there,’” Griffioen said. “And I knew if I was going to do this, I had to be 100 per cent in, or 100 per cent out. So I got back in.”

When she first came back in late 2019, things went very slowly for Griffioen. She competed in two tournaments and then the Covid-19 pandemic shut everything down.

Then when things opened up in 2021, Griffioen struggled. The losses piled up and she was getting frustrated she couldn’t return to the level she once held.

“I said to my coach, if I’m going to keep struggling like this for another year, when it is taking a toll on me mentally, then it’s not worth it,” Griffioen said. “But then it started to get better.”

In 2022, Griffioen made the quarters at Australian Open and Roland Garros, and semi-finals at Wimbledon and here in Flushing Meadows. Progress was certainly being made.

“We built my game back up from zero,” Griffioen said. “Start from the basics, do the easy things really well, instead of the hard things.

“And then the fun came back, around the middle of 2021.”

Griffioen doesn’t know how long she’ll keep playing; she acknowledged that she’s “not the youngest” anymore, but she’s having fun and loving her partnership with De Groot, who is going for her third consecutive calendar Grand Slam in New York this week.

“She’s very strong, she’s very smart, and she has nothing to attack, really,” Griffioen said. “She has some of that where people don’t think they can beat her when they go on court.

“But I’m going to keep fighting and trying to beat her.”

Sounds like a woman with a lot of wheelchair tennis still ahead of her.