Hero worship can pay off: Just ask Kenin, and Rafa, and Roger

As the Australian Open started to hit the homestretch, video resurfaced of the eventual champ Sofia Kenin back when she was 7 years old expressing her admiration for Hall-of-Famer Andy Roddick. Roddick caught wind of it, and cheered her on to the title.

The overwhelming majority of professional athletes at one point tried to emulate the feats of someone they looked up to when they were a kid: from shooting countless jump shots in hopes of being the next Steph Curry to taking command in the huddle, like Tom Brady. Or, in the case of tennis, patterning your style of play after a Grand Slam champion.

And if you happen to be fortunate enough to meet a personal hero, then all the better.

Take a look at Rafael Nadal, for instance. He wasn’t the first player to put the tiny Spanish island of Mallorca on the map. Rather, it was his current coach, Carlos Moya, who first cracked the top 10 of the men’s rankings back in 1997, the year he reached the final of the Australian Open. His follow-up campaign saw him win the French Open and less than a year after that, he became the No. 1 player in the world. A pre-teen Nadal saw his countryman accomplishing all of that, and when he was 16, he faced his hero as a professional—and managed to win the match.

Nadal’s chief rival—and arguably, the game’s greatest player—Roger Federer also had his own brush with future Hall of Famers at an early age. Serving as a ballboy at his hometown tournament in Basel, Switzerland, Federer got to witness the pros on-court, with perhaps the most impactful moment coming in the tournament final in 1993, when Michael Stich defeated his professed idol—and later, coach—Stefan Edberg.

The newly retired Caroline Wozniacki had the opportunity to meet one of her heroes, Venus Williams, back in the early 2000s. The two would face off multiple times over the years as pros, and it wasn’t until their last match against each other—for the WTA Finals title in 2017—that the Dane would get her first victory over her one-time idol.

And just recently, Novak Djokovic spoke of having the chance early on in his playing days to meet one of his current coaches, Goran Ivanisevic, and note how much of an effect that had on him.

It’s all cyclical, and surely somewhere out there, a budding young player is picking up their Babolat racquet in hopes of becoming the next Sofia Kenin.