It has been three and a half years since Sofia Kenin put both hands to her face and teared up in Melbourne. That night, she had just won the Australian Open at 21, highlighting to the world her ferocious will to fight for every point, every shot.
When her hands came down, she was not even smiling, her concentration apparently on maintaining composure as she soaked in the moment of a lifetime.
To this day, Kenin says, reflecting back on that triumph requires a bit of a mental blockade.
“I try not to think about it too much, because I might get a bit emotional,” she said on Thursday after her biggest win in over two years. “I mean, it happened, and I definitely believe that I can get there again.”
Over the last couple of years, that possibility had seemed extremely remote for Kenin, the Moscow-born American player. But in the first week of Wimbledon, she has shown some of the skill and tenacity that once took her to the summit of women’s tennis.
On Monday, she beat Coco Gauff in the first round. On Thursday, she defeated Xinyu Wang, 6-4, 6-3, to plow into the third round of a major tournament for the first time since she reached the fourth round of the 2021 French Open.
She is still at the earliest stages of a campaign to claw her way back to relevance. She knows there are…
