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2020 Australian Open: Sofia Kenin Outruns Garbiñe Muguruza to Win the Women’s Final in Melbourne

Sofia Kenin’s childhood hero was the Russian tennis player Maria Sharapova. Kenin’s parents, like Sharapova’s father, were Russians with a daughter who wanted to be the best women’s tennis player in the world. And so the Kenins, like the Sharapovas, eventually made their way to Florida. Florida is where many of the world’s tennis prodigies spend their childhoods, doing drills for hours each weekday, competing in junior tournaments on weekends, and going to bed each night knowing their national-ranking number and clinging to their dream. With Kenin’s father, Alex, coaching her, Sofia, who goes by Sonya, dominated the junior rankings. Sonya Kenin would not grow up to be tall, like Maria Sharapova, who is six feet two; Kenin is listed, perhaps generously, at five-seven. From the beginning, however, she had Sharapova’s fight, which, in tennis, is the on-court manifestation of a hatred of losing so encompassing, so unwavering, that there’s simply no room for self-doubt. In Florida last year, I met with Rick Macci, a childhood coach of Kenin’s, as he had been of the Williams sisters. He referred to Kenin as “the mosquito.” She was, even as a young girl, an irritating opponent, relentless, devoid of uncertainty.

Kenin, playing as an American, won the Australian Open women’s final on Saturday, defeating Garbiñe Muguruza, of Spain, 4–6, 6–2, 6–2. The line score is a bit deceiving—those last two sets were thick with contested points. Kenin found a way to win most of them. She found ways not to go away.

The match, even before it began, had already found a place in the record books—a Grand Slam women’s final in which neither of the two finalists was in the Top Ten when the tournament began. Which is not to say they didn’t belong in the championship match. Muguruza won the French Open in 2016, and Wimbledon the following year. She spent the next two years flailing—battling minor injuries and, depending on the week, grappling with either a significant lack of desire or confidence. She hit bottom at Wimbledon last summer, losing in the first round to a qualifier. She cut her season short this past fall and climbed Mount Kilimanjaro—to find herself, in her telling. She began this year with a new coach, Conchita Martinez, the former Spanish great who’d been working with Muguruza on a trial basis when she won Wimbledon. Muguruza, unseeded in Melbourne, knocked off three Top Ten players on her road to the final (including Simona Halep, in the semifinal), serving strong, going big early in rallies, and coming forward to finish points with swinging volleys. She was playing like the champion she’d been.

Kenin, who began the year ranked No. 15 in the world, is a twenty-one-year-old who hadn’t yet won a match on the W.T.A. tour when Muguruza won Wimbledon. But she rose steadily through the rankings in 2018, and last summer she scored upset wins over Serena Williams, Naomi Osaka, and Ashleigh Barty. In the fourth round in Melbourne, she dropped the first set to Coco Gauff, who had a full stadium roaring for every point she won and every error Kenin made. Kenin fed on it, or seemed to: she won the match going away, bagelling Gauff in the final set.

She lost the first set of Saturday’s final, too. Muguruza’s first serve was overpowering her, and Kenin’s forehand, a vulnerability at times, was not finding its intended targets—she shanked one to go down a break early. She’d break back later, only to be broken again and eventually lose the set. But there were clear signs that Kenin wasn’t finished. Her drop shot was working. She was slicing her forehand, an unusual shot in élite tennis today, and Muguruza, forced to bend low and generate her own pace, was, as often as not, hitting it back long. Kenin was also lengthening rallies, hitting lots of balls up the middle and robbing Muguruza of the angles she sought to close out points quickly. Kenin was winning most of those extended rallies, and Muguruza, not even an hour into the match, was doing a lot of breathing through her mouth.

Kenin never gasps for air. She has more energy than she knows what to do with. She expends it, between points, stomping, muttering to herself, bouncing her racquet like it’s a ball, or looking for eye contact with her father. (He remains her primary coach and, seated in the front row of her player’s box during her matches, can be found holding his head in his hands, gesturing to the heavens, and, in general, carrying on like Victor Borge in his prime.) Kenin gets to the baseline to serve as quickly as anyone in professional tennis. Once there, she exhibits one of the oddest service tosses I’ve ever seen: she keeps her head down as she tosses the ball, then looks up abruptly to find it, like a skeet shooter sighting a flung clay target. She runs to her bench during changeovers. She runs and runs on court, too, reaching balls that pull her into the doubles alleys yet, somehow, slows down just enough to make the tiny last-second adjustment steps she needs to get set and balanced and strike the ball cleanly. This makes for superb defense and devastates an opponent.

And so it was, in the end, against Muguruza. Muguruza’s first serve took a walk in the second set—the biggest factor in allowing Kenin to even the match at a set apiece—but she found it again in set three, despite showing signs (heavy breathing, stiff swinging, lunging) of being sapped. In the fifth game of the third set, with the score tied 2–2, Kenin, serving, hit a patch of loose tennis and quickly fell behind, 0–40. The three points that followed essentially decided things. Kenin saved all three break points by extending rallies with patient crosscourt groundstrokes and uncanny defense in the corners before finally, when the opportunity presented itself, bravely going for it, taking the ball early and redirecting it crisply down the line. Three clean winners. Kenin would go on to hold her serve, and Muguruza would never win another game.

Kenin’s championship victory in Melbourne will move her up the rankings to No. 7 in the world, ahead of Serena Williams. Sonya Kenin, all but unheard of to the casual fan, is now the top-ranked American woman in tennis. “I did it with all the belief that I’ve had,” she said, in her post-match press conference. “I’ve always had that.” She was asked if she could remember the last time she felt doubt. “Not really,” she said.

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