Penickova on cusp of Australian Open twin success after doubles title
Is there anyone more bubbly at the 2025 Australian Open Junior Championships than Kristina Penickova? It would be a bold call to find anyone with as much fizz and bonhomie as the 15-year-old Californian.
She has good reason to be cheerful. On Friday, she moved into the girls’ singles final before teaming up with twin sister Annika and winning the girls’ doubles title. All in all, not a bad day at the office.
In her singles semi-final, Penickova dispatched Slovakia’s Mia Pohankova 6-4 4-6 7-5. Penickova, seeded No. 6 here in Melbourne, took the first set quickly and dashed to a 4-1 second-set lead at which point it looked all over.
She was smacking every ball with great force and aplomb but as the final beckoned, Pohankova pulled herself together, relaxed the shoulders and began to hit freely. Within minutes, she was level at 4-4 and suddenly it was one-set all.
Penickova looked as though she could not quite believe the turnaround – no-one could really - and the Slovak kept the momentum going and surged into a final-set lead.
It ebbed and flowed thereafter, with Penickova holding match point against serve at 6-5, although that came to nothing. She did, however, seize her second chance.
Both players won 113 points in two hours and 22 minutes with just one more break of serve – eight – to Penickova.
A few hours later, Penickova returned to the court alongide her sister to play the girls’ doubles final against Australia’s Emerson Jones and Great Britain’s Hannah Klugman. The Penickova sisters prevailed 6-4 6-2.
“Winning the doubles with my sister means so much to me,” said Kristina, whose parents both played tennis growing up in Czechia before emigrating to California. “To have our family on the side as well, this means more than anything.”
There is an equal playing field in operation in the Penickova household as the twins are unaware who was born first. “We have no idea who is older, our parents never told us,” added Kristina.
Penickova has not yet set foot on Rod Laver Arena - where Saturday’s singles final will be played - and she plans on enjoying the moment when it arrives.
Japan’s Wakana Sonobe, meanwhile, will be Penickova’s opponent after she defeated the home favourite – and junior world No. 1 Jones – 6-3 6-4 in the other semi-final.
To be fair, it was a deserved victory for Sonobe, who blew Jones away with continued heavy serving that saw her amass eight aces, compared to Jones’s one.
Sonobe is also older, more experienced and physically bigger than Jones and her booming left-handed serve and forehand seemed to give her the edge from the off.
Jones tried throughout but has played a lot of tennis - junior and senior - already this month and did not quite look herself.
Sonobe will now bid to go one step further than she did at September’s US Open Junior Championships when, chasing her maiden Junior Grand Slam title, she succumbed to Great Britain’s Mika Stojsavljevic.
Tomorrow, however, is another day.
A full list of results from the 2025 Australian Open Junior Championships is available here