ITF W100 Tokyo: Ena Shibahara vs Wakana Sonobe final analysis
Lefty serves, backhand consistency and then forehand firepower in crunch time from Sonobe as she won her first professional tournament
Last Sunday, two of the most promising 17-year olds in women's tennis coincided in conquering their first career W100 title, the highest on the ITF World Tour.
Iva Jovic (WTA #141) justified her top seed status in Charlottesville while Wakana Sonobe (WTA #448) made the best use possible of her wildcard in Tokyo.
Read more on Jovic’s win in Charlottesville:
For Sonobe, 2025 has been a season of success and plenty of milestones.
The lefty teenager began the year clinching her first Junior Major title at the Australian Open to become the tournament’s first Japanese Girls’ singles champion.
Then she converted a qualifying wildcard at WTA 500 Abu Dhabi into a magical WTA Tour main-draw debut that developed into a win over Yuan Yue (ranked #54 at the time) and a second round meeting with Ons Jabeur.
Now, Sonobe has claimed her first professional title after defeating some experienced opponents and toughing out tight matches, like her 7-5 third set win over veteran Lin Zhu in round 2 or her 6-4, 6-7 [1:7], 6-3 triumph over 5-seed Ena Shibahara (WTA #135) in the championship match.
An aggressive baseliner with an already decent delivery, Sonobe was clutch on serve throughout the third set of the final, taking all 5 points played when the score was at 30/30 or Deuce to avoid facing a break point during the decider.
All match, she had a high 1st serve winning percentage that kept rising.
Sonobe 1st serves won
set 1: 70% (14/20)
set 2: 73% (19/26)
set 3: 80% (12/15)
Sonobe’s lefty hooking slice 1st serves — down the T on the Deuce side and out wide on the AD side — gave Shibahara plenty of trouble, extracting a combined 11 return errors (marked by orange circles, below).
Sonobe came in with a 0-3 record in ITF Tour finals — all at W15 level; one in each of the previous 3 seasons — but any traumatic memories were well buried in the past as she confidently went for her shots when crunch time arrived at 3-3 in the third set.
Sonobe hit 7 winning shots and a single unforced error while putting together a 12-4 run to win the last 3 games.
It was her forehand that shone bright in those decisive moments, as seen in the video below.
📺 source: ITF Tour
Also prominent during the last 3 games were 5 unforced errors from Shibahara. Her closing efforts were particularly doomed by 3 2nd serve return misses, including 2 in the last game.
Overall, the difference was set by backhand performances.
Sonobe created a 12-point advantage from the backhand wing (-18 to -30) almost entirely through superior consistency.
While both players hit a very similar number of backhand winners, Shibahara with 7 and Sonobe with 8, Sonobe finished with 26 errors from the backhand side, 11 fewer than Shibahara’s total of 37.
Forehand Performances
Shibahara: 13 winners / 33 errors = -20
Sonobe: 15 winners / 36 errors = -21
Backhand Performances
Shibahara: 7 winners / 37 errors = -30
Sonobe: 8 winners / 26 errors = -18
One of the most impressive features in Sonobe’s exhibition was her ability to control errors — just 1 — while coming up with 4 winning shots when she was pulled wide on the backhand and into the Deuce side alley (orange circles, below).
Here is a compilation of those quality backhands struck by Sonobe from the alley.
The first 2 points shown above lasted 9+ shots. In that rally range, Sonobe won all 6 long points that played out.
She also collected a 6-point advantage from short rallies (72 to 66) whereas Shibahara finished with a 4-point edge in medium rallies (24 to 20).
Shibahara, a doubles expert, did a lot better in the frontcourt, winning 73% of net approaches (8 of 11) against just 54% from Sonobe in 13 moves forward (7 of 13).
But those numbers weren’t enough to neutralize Sonobe’s backcourt superiority.
The teenager won 10 more baseline duels (55 to 45) and did 6% better when rallying from the back (52% vs 46%). Because of it, Sonobe clinched her first career pro title.
Ena Shibahara (WTA #135, seed 5) vs Wakana Sonobe (WTA #448, wildcard)
2025 Tokyo final - Match Data
Set by Set Stats
Strokes Breakdown
Direction of winning shots and unforced errors (only groundstrokes)
Serve and Return
2nd Serves
Return & rallying performance
Rally Length
Points won breakdown
This final section gives a last, broader look at the match by presenting how each player won points. Points are listed according to their frequency (highest to lowest) and are named in relation to the last touch on the ball. For simplicity, groundstrokes hit from the 5th shot onwards are grouped together.
Breakdown by side (FHs or BHs)
Breakdown by error type (UFEs or FEs)
To find out more about the stats published here, please visit the following post.
While we follow the same criteria used on all major tennis events, our stats are collected through our own video analysis and are not official WTA or ITF stats.
Thanks for reading!
— Tennis Inside Numbers