Sofia Kenin recently won the Miami Open in doubles, but it's not happening for her in singles, as she lost her eighth consecutive match.
It's tough to say what's not working for Kenin because she didn't forget how to play tennis. She played really solid tennis in Miami. It's just the dimensions, apparently. When she has the full doubles court at her disposal, Kenin is a killer, but when she shrinks to the singles dimension, it just doesn't work out.
To be fair, today's match had quite a few things that didn't really benefit her. It was a rather short turnaround from Miami, even though Charleston is a relatively short flight away from Florida. It's a different surface, which would not have been a huge problem for Kenin had she had enough time to practice on it, and she didn't.
She was also playing a really tricky player who knows the Charleston Open very well and has been playing pretty decently recently. All of that likely contributed to her losing the match, but her struggles in singles are rather worrying.
The last time she won a singles match was back in Australia. Since then, we've seen her play 8 matches, and she lost all of them. She didn't even struggle this much when she was injured, so it's just strange to see.
This match against Taylor Townsend in particular was lost on the serve and return. She didn't serve well which gave Townsend a lot of chances as the courts do play quicker then general clay. She also returned pretty poorly winning only a handful of points behind the first serve of Townsend. In short, she was just outplayed by a better player today.
The final score was 6-3 6-3 for Townsend leaving Kenin with a lot of questions. Because this isn't sustainable unless she wants to pivot to doubles tennis permanently.
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