Tennis: a new grand-slam champion
Ever since Sofia Kenin emerged as a tennis prodigy, at just five years old, coaches would speak of her “fighting spirit”, said Stuart Fraser in The Sunday Times. And the world got a glimpse of that spirit on Saturday, in the second set of the Australian Open final. A set down to Garbiñe Muguruza, Kenin dug in and battled hard for a “stunning” comeback to pick up her first grand-slam title. With this victory, the 21-year-old replaced Serena Williams as the topranked American player, and rose to No. 7 in the world. “Her rapid rise will surely not stop there.”
Kenin was born in Moscow, but her family moved to the US a few months later, said Mike Dickson in The Mail on Sunday. When she was three, they realised she had remarkably well-developed ball skills; they soon moved to Florida so she could train with Rick Macci, a celebrated coach. “Much was expected of her as a teenager”, but only last year did her career really take off. Now this relentlessly energetic player is the competition’s youngest winner in 12 years. Kenin’s triumph “reflects significant trends in women’s tennis”, said Christopher Clarey in The New York Times. Until recently, the game looked set to be dominated by “towering power players”. Yet Kenin is a relatively short 5ft 7in, the same height as Bianca Andreescu, who won last year’s US Open; Ashleigh Barty, the world No. 1, is even shorter. The trick for shorter players is to hit the ball early, “to avoid having to do so out of their ideal hitting zone” – and Kenin’s earlycontact skills are “extraordinary”. The last 12 majors have delivered eight first-time grand-slam champions, said Joshua Robinson in The Wall Street Journal. That has made the sport remarkably unpredictable: players keep lifting a maiden grand-slam title, only to see their form nosedive. The challenge for Kenin now is to avoid suffering that same fate.