Sofia Kenin Has Been Aced the Most in 2025 (and it’s not close)

Sofia Kenin’s run at the Cincinnati Open came to an end quite soon as she was defeated in her opening match. It was Varvara Gracheva who got the better of her, winning 6-7 6-3 6-3, and moving on to the third round. Kenin’s loss came as a surprise, as the bookmakers favoured her – she led the head-to-head 1-0, having won their previous meeting at the French Open just a couple of months earlier. Still, it’s not a shocking loss. What’s truly shocking is that Kenin was aced 15 times.

Why? Because Gracheva had never reached double digits in aces – not only in 2025, but in her entire career. Yet in a way, it’s somewhat predictable, as Kenin has a clear weakness when it comes to returning, and the numbers don’t lie.

Kenin’s Return Problem

According to Tennis Abstract data, Sofia Kenin is the female player in the WTA top 50 with the highest ace rate against: 11.2%. That wouldn’t even be too worrying if the second player on that list – Russia’s Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova – didn’t have just a 6.6% rate. This means Kenin has been aced almost twice as often as nearly every other WTA player over the past 52 weeks. She has already been aced 300 times in less than a full season. It can’t be a coincidence, so let’s take a quick look at her 44 matches played this year.

When the Aces Rain Down

The most aces Kenin gave up in a single match came in Auckland against Clara Tauson: 26. But it was a long three-setter with 111 points played on the Dane’s serve. She did much worse in Washington against Taylor Townsend: 17 aces over 43 points played on her fellow American’s serve (39.5%), meaning that almost every five points, two were aces. Overall, in 2025, her opponents hit double-digit aces in 9 matches. Perhaps most concerning is that she has not finished a single match without getting aced at least once — whether she dominated (like against Inglis in Indian Wells, 6-2 6-1) or was routed (like against Gauff in Miami, 6-0 6-0).

What About the Surfaces?

Surprisingly, grass wasn’t the worst. She played 6 matches between Berlin, Eastbourne and Wimbledon, and only once did her opponent reach double digits (Tomljanovic, 16). The real disaster was the North American hard-court swing. Her only win came in Washington against Baptiste, who served 9 aces. In her other three matches, she conceded 34 aces in total (17 vs. Townsend in Washington, 12 vs. Mboko in Montreal, and 15 vs. Gracheva in Cincinnati).

The Million-Dollar Question

Why does Kenin get aced so much? First of all, it’s important to distinguish between matches. Big servers like Rybakina and Tauson (third and fourth in ace rate standings, respectively) can hit 15–25 aces on a good serving day against almost anyone. Kenin also struggles a lot against left-handed players — only on return, as her record in 2025 against them is 6-1 — such as Townsend, Kvitova, and Pera (46 aces conceded in four matches).

That said, it’s hard to find a definitive answer — and Kenin herself might be the only one who could. American journalist Ben Rothenberg asked her about it in Charleston, and she admitted:

“I obviously look at the stats, so I’m like, ‘Damn it, not something I like to see!’ But I’m hoping to win the match. If I win the match, then that’s fine if they’re acing me.”

She also mentioned working on being more aggressive on return and improving her split-step.

The Lesson from Mboko’s Match

Alex Kenin, Sofia’s father and coach, told Rothenberg that his daughter was standing too far back. But that doesn’t seem to be the actual problem. Looking at the highlights from her match against Mboko in Montreal, the main issue was that she was standing way too close to the baseline and trying to guess the serve’s direction, leaving one corner wide open. It worked well on second serves (where she even stepped inside the court), but on first serves it was a suicidal tactic. No wonder she won just 7 points on Mboko’s first serve and conceded 12 aces.

For comparison, Coco Gauff — the best returner on the WTA Tour according to the percentage of return points won — was aced just twice in her match against Mboko. She lost as well, but for other reasons. Standing further back, she managed to get the rally started almost every time.

The Fatigue Factor

One last factor to consider may be fatigue. In 2025, with a couple of months still to go, Kenin has already played 44 matches — something she hasn’t done in a long time. In 2024, she played 42 matches. Her previous totals were: 48 (2023), 27 (2022), 21 (2021), and 33 (2020).

That might have been a key factor in her loss to Townsend in DC, where she missed several returns she could have handled. Whether it was just a bad day or poor footwork, she delivered a performance that a player with her ambitions cannot afford.

Main Photo Credit: Susan Mullane – Imagn Images