Nina’s Athlete Card

Nina is a 12-year-old junior tournament player training at Riverside Tennis Academy with genuinely clean groundstrokes — a forehand and backhand smooth enough that coaches assume the results should follow. The gap this season has been the difference between good strokes and winning matches. Her second serve was a liability she'd either double-fault or float in for her opponent to attack; on the big points she'd stop hitting through the ball and just push it back, hoping her opponent missed; and in tight matches she'd get tight and negative between points. The spring's work went straight at those three, and clean strokes are starting to turn into wins.

• ▸Genuinely clean groundstrokes off both wings — the technical foundation is real and ahead of her age.
• ▸Competitive and coachable — she wants to win and she'll do the work to fix a weakness.
• ▸Good movement and court sense; she gets to a lot of balls.
• ▸Starting to trust a higher-margin second serve, which is taking the free points away from her opponents.

Nina is working to turn clean strokes into match wins. Specifically: a reliable, high-margin second serve — one with enough spin that she can go for it without double-faulting or floating it up to be attacked, the habit of staying on offense and hitting through the ball on the big points instead of retreating into pushing, and a between-points routine that keeps her calm and positive in a tight match. The strokes are already there; this season is about the parts of tennis that actually decide who wins.