Time to win: meet Sofia Kenin
‘I want to become the number one in the world’: Alex, her father and coach since her early childhood, reveals that these were among Sofia Kenin’s very first words
Who knows if he imagined they would become true, and that her daughter, now 21, could win the Australian Open. The youngest winner since Maria Sharapova, to be precise: Kenin holds a record, also on her long-time personal idol.
Sofia’s success is sponsored by FILA and perhaps not by chance, since she impersonates many values promoted by the brand. Her will, tenacity and tactical intelligence, which made her win against Spanish champion Garbine Magiroza last February 1st, come from her family, that moved from Russia to the United States in 1987.
Kenin is a perfect, proud multicultural model: she supports the American Way of Life (she usually plays with a stars-and-stripes tennis racket head) but she answers to journslists’ questions in Russian, the same langugage she speaks with her parents at home in Pembroke Pines, Florida. Her family played a fundamental role when they saw her ‘extraordinary attitude towards tennis’ when she was only three and a half years old, encouraging her to practice it with sacrifice and discipline. On her path, among others, she met Rick Macci, trainer of Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova, who forged her timing, also nicknaming her ‘mosquito’, because of her ‘inborn mental strength and wilfulness.
Also, she’s never out of balance, she hits the ball while it’s still on the rise and knows how to push you out of the court. Few girls can play a junk ball as she does’. These abilities have been widely demonstrated at the Australian Open, where her winning ace gained ovations and well-deserved respect from the audience. ‘My dream has officially come true, so if you have a dream believe in it, it’s going to be real!’.
Sofia (or Sonya, the nickname she personally uses on social networks) is both gritty and fashion-conscious, as her FILA looks show: among them, the blue and water green outfit she wore in Melbourne has become iconic. A few days ago, on Instagram, she asked her followers what they thought about another outfit, a pink and red one she would have loved to sport at Indian Wells: that tournament, as we sadly know, has been postponed, but we are sure that the grit and the strength of this girl will be back and prove unstoppable on the court soon.
