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By Giri Nathan
[vc_empty_space height="15px"]Two years ago, Sofia Kenin, a prodigy who’d ruled the juniors, appeared to have solved the pros, too. I’m still rattled by what she did at 2–2 in the third set of the 2020 Australian Open final. Serving to Garbine Muguruza, down 0–40, she reeled off five straight winners, shots she’d later call “the best shots of her life,” apparently getting angrier and angrier after each one, and drawing strength from that very anger. She didn’t drop a game for the rest of the match. Here was this 21-year-old boasting not just elite movement and timing, but a talent for productive wrath. The game always needs a little dose of that. Over the course of 2020, Kenin established a comfortable perch at the top of the game, and seemed like she’d hang around there for a decade. She started the year with that trophy in Australia, and finished the year with the runner-up trophy at a chilly, pandemic-delayed Roland-Garros. In between, she won a title in Lyon and made the fourth round of the US Open. Coming into the 2021 season, she was the No. 4 player in the world. This week, world No. 130 Sofia Kenin was granted a wild card to Indian Wells, where she fell in the first round to world No. 61 Beatriz Haddad Maia, marking her sixth straight loss. What happened?