Sofia Kenin can't find the game that once won her the Australian Open, as she once again stumbled on the first obstacle, this time losing to the World No. 188 player.
This year, the American player has been a shadow of her former self. Kenin won the Australian Open in 2020 and subsequently reached the French Open final, but since then, she has yet to match those achievements.
In the years after, Kenin struggled with injuries that kept her away from the tennis courts for some time, but in recent months, nothing prevented her from competing.
That is best highlighted by her success on the doubles court. In doubles, Kenin won the titles in Abu Dhabi and Miami and climbed to the World No. 25 position, while also having success at other tournaments.
In singles, however, the 25-year-old just can't find the recipe for success. This year, she played 33 matches and won only 10 times, with her most recent loss coming at the 2024 Japan Championships in Osaka.
The draw for the 2024 Japan Championships isn't the strongest, given that it's a WTA 250 tournament right after two WTA 1000 events. After the top two seeds withdrew from the event, World No. 27 Elise Mertens is the highest-ranked player remaining in the draw.
That could have presented former World No. 4 Kenin with a great opportunity to make a deep run and boost her ranking, as currently, she's only the World No. 158 player in the WTA Rankings.
However, the former Grand Slam winner lost her first match against the World No. 188, Aoi Ito. A 20-year-old player from Japan, Ito has never played in a WTA Tour-level main draw, and this match marked her debut after going through two qualifying rounds.
But if one of the players was nervous, it wasn't the debutant who made it to the main draw through the qualifying, but her opponent, who received a wild card for this event.
Kenin went into a 2-1 lead early in the first set, but she then couldn't find the court for the remainder of the set, losing five consecutive games to lose the first set 2-6.
The American player then forgot that terrible start to the match. She broke first in the second set to lead 2-0, and with another break of serve, she increased her lead to 4-1.
At 5-1, Kenin had set points to win the second set, but she couldn't use them and later complicated the situation for herself, losing one of the breaks and leading only 5-3. Still, she could break again to win the second set 6-3 and send the match into the decider.
The third set was going great for Kenin. She broke her opponent's serve twice, led 4-0, and it seemed like she was cruising to a needed first-round victory in Osaka.
She then lost one of her breaks, but that didn't seem particularly troubling, as she still led 5-2 in the decider and had at least one chance to serve out the match.
Shockingly, since leading 5-2, Kenin lost 20 of the following 26 points, losing the match in three sets, 2-6, 6-3, 5-7 to record yet another painful loss.