Sofia Kenin has been playing bad tennis lately, and it continued at the 2024 Madrid Open, where she lost her ninth consecutive match.
Kenin showed some promising tennis before the start of the 2024 season, being part of the team that won the World Tennis League in Abu Dhabi. She scored some pretty impressive wins back then, and many assumed that she might be in for a really solid year.
It didn't quite go that way because Kenin started to struggle quite early in the year. She would keep struggling over the following few weeks, and now it's been months since she last won a match on the WTA Tour.
The last time Kenin actually won a match on the WTA Tour was on January 9th, 2024, so it's been almost four months since she last won. Her current score for the year is 1-10, and this most recent loss in Madrid is her ninth consecutive loss this year.
That's an unprecedented losing streak for Kenin, who has never lost so many consecutive matches in her career. It's difficult to explain why it happens or why she's losing so much, but ultimately, it comes down to not playing well enough to win matches.
Her match in Madrid was against Anna Karolina Schmiedlova, a solid clay player and veteran who has been on Tour for many years. The Slovakian player was simply better, although not by much.
The first set was 6-3 in favor of Schmiedlova, and she simply used her chances while Kenin didn't. The American had two break points but used neither. The second set was actually more competitive, but once again, it ended with the same result.
Schmiedlova used her chances while Kenin largely didn't, even though she broke this time around. She broke Schmiedlova once but got broken two times, which was enough for the Slovakian to win the set. The final score was 6-3, 6-4 for Schmiedlova.