{"id":88648,"date":"2025-08-13T07:30:46","date_gmt":"2025-08-13T11:30:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/?p=88648"},"modified":"2025-08-13T10:04:30","modified_gmt":"2025-08-13T14:04:30","slug":"aced-the-most-in-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/2025\/08\/13\/aced-the-most-in-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"Sofia Kenin Has Been Aced the Most in 2025 (and it\u2019s not close)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sofia Kenin\u2019s run at the Cincinnati Open<\/a> 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\u2019s 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<\/a> just a couple of months earlier. Still, it\u2019s not a shocking loss. What\u2019s truly shocking is that Kenin was aced 15 times.<\/p>\n

Why? Because Gracheva had never reached double digits in aces – not only in 2025, but in her entire career. Yet in a way, it\u2019s somewhat predictable, as Kenin has a clear weakness when it comes to returning, and the numbers don\u2019t lie.<\/p>\n

Kenin’s Return Problem<\/h2>\n

According to Tennis Abstract data<\/a>, Sofia Kenin is the female player in the WTA top 50 with the highest ace rate against: 11.2%. That wouldn\u2019t even be too worrying if the second player on that list – Russia\u2019s Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova – didn\u2019t 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\u2019t be a coincidence, so let\u2019s take a quick look at her 44 matches played this year.<\/p>\n

Embed from Getty Images<\/a>