With the years of Serena Williams’s dominance now behind it, women’s tennis is now firmly in its unpredictability era.
For over a decade, you could pencil Williams in for at least one or two Grand Slams automatically, long before anyone hit a tennis ball. But for the past three years, four different women have won each of the four major tournaments. The last time that happened was before World War II.
Now, after the first Slam of the season, 2020 figures to be just as open. The 21-year-old American Sofia Kenin on Saturday won the Australian Open by beating Garbiñe Muguruza of Spain 4-6, 6-2, 6-2.
With that, eight of the past 12 Slam winners have now been first-timers. And Kenin, the daughter of Russian immigrants to the U.S., became just the second American woman without the last name Williams to lift a Grand Slam trophy since 2002. (The other was Sloane Stephens , who won the 2017 U.S. Open.)
Neither Kenin nor Muguruza had arrived in Melbourne expecting to stay for the full two weeks. Muguruza was coming off one of the rockiest periods of her career, which saw her ranking plummet as low as No. 36 in the world.
And Kenin, a 21-year-old without an appearance in the top 10, had never been past the fourth round of a Slam.
But by Saturday in Australia, Kenin’s class and steely resolve were no longer mysteries to the tennis world. She had made a statement by dropping world No. 1 Ashleigh Barty in the semifinal and came out swinging against Muguruza, a two-time Slam winner.
Though she took the first set, Muguruza showed some of the wobble that dogged her through the end of last season. From 4-2 up with three break points, she let Kenin tie things up with a pair of double faults in the eighth game, and had to scrape over the line to win 6-4.
But Kenin wasn’t finished. Unshaken by her first appearance in a Grand Slam final, she gathered herself to produce some incredibly tidy tennis and frustrated Muguruza. She took the second set 6-2 with only four unforced errors along the way.
Kenin saved three break points at 2-2 in the third set and never looked back. She raced away, pumping her fist and pounding her stars-and-stripes-painted racket until breaking Muguruza’s serve one last time to claim the championship.
