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Post by Admin on Apr 8, 2020 5:06:22 GMT
With the current suspension of the ATP and WTA Tours, we are opening up our US Open vault to bring you full match videos of classic encounters through the years in New York.
Watch on YouTube: Sofia Kenin vs. CoCo Vandeweghe, 2019 US Open women's singles first round
Sofia Kenin entered the 2019 US Open as a rising star, her No. 20 seed matching her age. Some four months before her major breakthrough at the Australian Open, she reached the third round in New York for the third straight year, racking up her 25th and 26th hard-court wins of 2019—a year that began with her first WTA title, at the Hobart International in Australia.
CoCo Vandeweghe, a 2017 US Open semifinalist, used a protected ranking to enter the 2019 tournament after a right-ankle injury had sidelined her for the better part of a year.
Despite their diverging paths to New York, the two Americans traded blow for blow throughout the first set in the Grandstand. Strong serving from both women led to a tiebreak, with no service breaks in the opener. As the match wore on, the younger Kenin created separation from her then-27-year-old opponent to advance.
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Post by Admin on Oct 6, 2020 6:09:52 GMT
No.4 seed Sofia Kenin had to come back from a set down against France’s Fiona Ferro to book her spot into the Roland Garros quarterfinals for the first time. The reigning Australian Open champion had to shake off a sluggish start as she dropped six games in a row in the opening set to the inspired Ferro, who rallied the sparse but passionate crowd on Court Philippe Chatrier. But Kenin completed the turnaround in emphatic fashion, dropping only three more games from a set down en route to a 2-6, 6-2, 6-1 victory to reach her third quarterfinal of the season - and second career Grand Slam final eight. “I was just super proud of myself,” Kenin said, after shedding tears in celebration of the win. “Yes, there was a lot of emotions. I was just super happy that I won. Like, the crowd wasn't the best, which is understandable, but still I wish it would have been a little bit different. “I'm like super happy that I'm in the quarters. I usually don't play really good on clay. In the past in juniors, I really hated the clay. Last year I started to like it for the first time. “I'm just super proud of myself. I feel like I'm playing really well.”
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Post by Admin on Oct 7, 2020 19:22:22 GMT
Danielle Collins had a strange moment during her quarterfinal match at the French Open. The American asked her boyfriend, Tom Couch, to leave her players box on Court Philippe Chatrier in the early stages of the second set against Sofia Kenin on Wednesday. Collins’ frustration came after she failed to convert two break points against Kenin, the No. 4 seed, who had captured the first set. “I had my boyfriend move to a different spot because I was distracted by something in front of him,” Collins said. “I just wanted to be able to look at him from a different location. “Sometimes too when I was serving the ball, I could see my team in the background, and I didn’t like that. Actually during the [Garbine] Muguruza match they sat on the side of the court, and then I really didn’t like when they were sitting behind the court when I was playing [Ons] Jabeur. Yeah, it was just a mental thing, I guess.” Couch, who is also a trainer for Collins, headed down the steps before later re-appearing on the opposite end of the court. Collins would win the second, but failed to win a single game in the decisive third set. Kenin, the defending Australian Open champ, will now face Petra Kvitova in the semifinals.
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Post by Admin on Oct 8, 2020 19:19:36 GMT
Sofia Kenin entered 2020 with an 11-11 record in Grand Slam action. She never had made the quarterfinals at any clay-court tournament until this trip to Roland Garros -- and lost her only tuneup match on the surface 6-0, 6-0 last month.
Iga Swiatek is just 19. She's ranked 54th. She's never won a tour-level title of any sort. She'd never before been past the fourth round at a major tournament.
Look at the two of them now -- French Open finalists.
Already the owner of a major trophy from this year's Australian Open, the No. 4-seeded Kenin moved into the title match in Paris by beating No. 7 Petra Kvitova 6-4, 7-5 on Thursday.
"My mentality has obviously changed," said Kenin, who said she derived a boost of confidence from upsetting Serena Williams at Roland Garros a year ago. "I feel like I should be getting deep in a tournament, but try not to put pressure on myself."
The 21-year-old American will carry a 16-1 mark in Grand Slam action this season into Saturday's matchup against Poland's Swiatek.
"I'm going to be, like, an 'underdog," Swiatek said, using her fingers to make air quotes.
Maybe. On the other hand, consider how dominant she has been along the way to becoming the lowest-ranked women's finalist at Roland Garros since the WTA computer rankings began in 1975. Her latest lopsided win was via a 6-2, 6-1 score against Argentine qualifier Nadia Podoroska.
"It seems unreal," Swiatek said. "On one hand, I know that I can play great tennis. On the other hand, it's kind of surprising for me."
She has won all 12 sets she's played in the tournament, dropping merely 23 games.
Kvitova, a two-time Wimbledon champion, came in having won every set, too. But as Kenin put it: "I mean, that obviously doesn't mean anything if I'm playing well."
The lefty from the Czech Republic had grabbed 77% of her service games in the tournament, before Kenin stole two of the first three. Part of it was strong returning. More of it was the manner in which Kenin was pushing Kvitova around on a breezy late afternoon, pinning her to the baseline.
Also working in Kenin's favor was an ability to sense where a ball was headed and use her speed to track it down, repeatedly stretching points that seemed lost.
Eventually, that appeared to make Kvitova play as if she felt that she needed to try to do more, maybe do too much, because she would cut off points early by attempting to end them -- and, too often, she would miss the mark.
By the end, Kvitova produced 31 unforced errors, to 20 for Kenin, whose shouts of "Come on!" grew louder as the end grew closer. Her intensity also came through when she chucked her red-white-and-blue racket.
"I mean, obviously I felt like I could not overpower her. I knew I just needed to adjust my game," Kenin said. "I had to control the points, move her, dictate, try not to give her short balls, try to have a good serve."
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Post by Admin on Oct 9, 2020 6:54:43 GMT
If you’ve followed Sofia Kenin’s career for any amount of time, you’ve probably heard how her first coach, Rick Macci, described her when she came to his Florida academy as a 5-year-old. “She was the scariest little creature I’d ever seen,” Macci told The New York Times last year. Macci was referring to Kenin’s uncanny timing with a tennis racquet. Every backhand he fed her, she hit it back perfectly. And she still hits it perfectly 16 years later. Coming into her semifinal at Roland Garros on Thursday, the American had knocked off more than 100 winners from that side in her first five matches. But Kenin was more than just a ball-striking automaton when she was a kid. She also had a precocious grasp of tennis technique and tactics. At an event in Florida in 2005, a 6-year-old Kenin was asked if she thought she could return Andy Roddick’s 140-m.p.h. serve. After confidently saying “Yes,” she explained how: “If I split step and prepare early and I do a short backswing.” A teaching pro couldn’t have put it any better. “I understood everything at that age,” Kenin said with a laugh last year, as she watched a tape of that interview. In her 6-4, 7-5 win over Petra Kvitova in the semis today, Kenin showed that her intuitive grasp of the game is still very much intact. When we label certain players “artists,” we’re usually referring to their flair, their creativity, their ability to do something extra with their shots that no one else can do. Few people would describe Kenin’s game that way, because she never does anything extra, and never adds any more flair than is absolutely necessary. But watching her against Kvitova today, I started thinking that there is an art to her tactical approach. Kenin has a knack for finding the right shot for just about every occasion. With her, there’s no flair for flair’s sake. It’s all in the service of winning. “I'm a problem solver,” Kenin said today. “You obviously have to expect tough situations. It's a tennis match. You know your opponent wants to win. They want to find your weakness.” A few examples of Kenin’s problem solving on Thursday: Kenin mixed up her returns, something many players don’t do. In the third game, she hit a drop-shot return winner on one point; a slice forehand return on the next point; and then a hard drive return. Kvitova didn’t know what to expect by then, and she was broken. Kenin anticipated well and showed off her court sense. Kvitova has five inches on the 5’7 American, and she hits the ball much harder. Kenin countered that today by reading where the Czech was going to go, sliding into the ball, and putting her retrieval shots in difficult positions for Kvitova. More often than not, Kenin was in the right place to stop a Kvitova attack and turn it onto one of her own. “She was moving well,” Kvitova said of Kenin. “That was probably the key today.” Kenin attacked judiciously. Kvitova and Kenin make for an instructive contrast. Kvitova goes for broke from just about anywhere, while Kenin only tries for winners when she’s moving forward, and usually when she’s inside the baseline. While Kvitova did hit more winners than Kenin, the difference was negligible, 28 to 23.
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