{"id":66504,"date":"2026-09-05T19:17:43","date_gmt":"2026-09-05T19:17:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/66504\/"},"modified":"2026-09-05T19:17:43","modified_gmt":"2026-09-05T19:17:43","slug":"thea-frodin-who-was-serena-williams-body-double-in-king-richard-loses-in-her-us-open-debut-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/66504\/","title":{"rendered":"Thea Frodin, who was Serena Williams’ body double in ‘King Richard,’ loses in her US Open debut"},"content":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK \u2013 Thea Frodin once had to hit like Serena Williams in a movie<\/a>. On Tuesday at the U.S. Open<\/a>, she showed some pretty good power of her own in real life.<\/p>\n

The 17-year-old from California lost to No. 2 Elena Rybakina 6-3, 6-2 while playing her first WTA Tour match in a Grand Slam tournament.<\/p>\n

Frodin fired 11 aces, nearly doubling up one of the best servers in women’s tennis. She said her movie role in which she had to swing like Williams, the 23-time Grand Slam singles champion, doesn’t mean she feels pressure to show extra pop off the racket.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel I have always been an aggressive player. That\u2019s always been kind of my game, just to be aggressive,\u201d the 6-foot Frodin said. \u201cObviously my height gives me the chance to serve bigger.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the 2021 film \u201cKing Richard,\u201d Frodin was the body double for actor Demi Singleton, who played the younger Williams sister. Frodin earned the opportunity to audition after winning singles, doubles and mixed doubles sectional titles at the 10-and-under level in California and then spent six months working on set.<\/p>\n

Will Smith won an Oscar for his performance as Richard Williams, father to Serena and her sister, Venus. Frodin hasn’t met the sisters yet but said she noticed that Smith reposted one of her social media posts.<\/p>\n

Frodin played her way into the U.S. Open by winning the USTA Billie Jean King Girls\u2019 18s National Championships to earn a wild card. She quickly gained more attention than that type of player usually gets because of her \u201cKing Richard\u201d experience, but thought she handled that well.<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, I think it\u2019s hard to get away from all of that. It\u2019s kind of just about accepting it and not letting it get to you,\u201d Frodin said. \u201cI feel like I did a good job of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

With fans in the Grandstand chanting her name, Frodin fired consecutive aces after facing match point trailing 5-1, then hit another to erase a third match point Rybakina had earned and eventually held serve. Rybakina finally finished the match on her fourth try by hitting her sixth ace.<\/p>\n

Rybakina didn’t know much about Frodin the player, but said during their scouting her team became aware of her Williams’ role.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that she has great shots, and especially serve,\u201d Rybakina said. \u201cShe has this powerful game, which is I think great and it\u2019s just a matter of experience, be more stable, playing matches. But she has the game. She can be quite dangerous with these kind of shots.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rybakina is guaranteed to take the No. 1 ranking from Aryna Sabalenka if she reaches the semifinals, or if the two-time defending champion doesn’t win the tournament.<\/p>\n

Frodin said playing someone with Rybakina’s skills made it hard for her to show her normal aggressive style. Still in high school, she plans to return to junior tennis for now but hopes to have another chance at the top level.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it was a fun experience to kind of see how the best players in the world, how they hit their balls and their shots,\u201d Frodin said. \u201cHopefully the next time I meet her, if I do, I can be more experienced and see what I can do.\u201d<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

\nSee AP\u2019s full tennis coverage here<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK \u2013 Thea Frodin once had to hit like Serena Williams in a movie. On Tuesday at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":66505,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[217,137,246,9735,122,50,19499,11814],"class_list":["post-66504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-elena-rybakina","tag-aryna-sabalenka","tag-billie-jean-king","tag-elena-rybakina","tag-richard-williams","tag-serena-williams","tag-sports","tag-thea-frodin","tag-will-smith"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66504\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}