“During her career at the IMG Academy, we trained her in our program,” explained Zesinger, who has been with the IMG Academy since 2003. “We then had a Morita Fund coach, Ryuji Hirooka, who traveled with her. He was hired under IMG to be the Morita representative. He also overaw Rei Sakamoto and the other players part of Morita project. Right now, what we’re doing is building out a team for her under the IMG Academy umbrella, so we’ll be sending a full-time travel coach from our academy with her.
“Molding it all together is super important because so many juniors or pros just go off previous coaching and during this kind of transition, it’s important to have coaches like Ryuji and Jorge Gonzalez, who worked with her a lot here, as well as myself, to really help her through that transition as she gets to know her travel coach.”
Sonobe began that transition not long after lifting the junior title in Melbourne. The very next week, she made her WTA main-draw debut as a qualifier at the Abu Dhabi Open. Two months later, she won her first W100 ITF Pro Circuit title in Gifu, Japan, ultimately rising to just outside the Top 250 by this fall.
In between, Sonobe returns in the IMG Academy dorms, where she’s lived and trained since she was 13 years old.
