Mirra Andreeva is showing why she just may be the best player in women’s tennis.
And she’s only 17.
With Friday’s 7-6(1), 1-6, 6-4 BNP Paribas Open semifinal win over defending Indian Wells champion Iga Świątek, Andreeva has now won 11 consecutive matches. She dropped just two sets in those matches.
She’ll face top-ranked Aryna Sabalenka in the Indian Wells final on Sunday.
“After she literally killed me in the second set,” Andreeva said courtside, “I was just, ‘Well, OK, I’m just going to try to fight.’ I just decided to grind and fight for every point. It doesn’t matter how I put the ball in, but I have to put it in. I think, in the end, it was not too bad.”
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The Russian tennis star, who is currently ranked No. 11 in the world, is the youngest since Kim Clijsters in 2001 to play for a BNP Paribas Open title.
By winning the Dubai title last month, Andreeva became the youngest WTA 1000 champion in the format’s history. Now she has a chance to win a second WTA 1000 title.
Andreeva beat Świątek in Dubai. Friday was the rematch. Świątek had won 20 consecutive sets at this event, dating back to last year.
But Andreeva went up a break in the fifth game before Świątek secured a break point of her own to force a tiebreak. Andreeva was dominant in the tiebreak, winning seven of the eight points.
After taking a brief off-court break, Świątek returned and cruised in the second set, securing three break points in the set. Andreeva threw her racket, and it felt like maybe Andreeva’s youth would prevent her from finding her way back into the match.
Andreeva won 88% of the points on her first serve; down to just 46% in the second set.
Andreeva then took an off-court break of her own, threw on a long-sleeved pullover shirt and returned to immediately go up a break. She held her own serve before going up another break to frustrate the Polish tennis star.
“I felt much better playing with a long sleeve,” Andreeva said. “Maybe I should have done that a bit earlier, but it’s fine.”
While Świątek began issuing a complaint to the chair umpire, Andreeva remained poised, with the crowd in her favor. When play resumed, Andreeva continued firing the ball down the sideline, shot-after-shot.
Andreeva’s serve speed topped out at 126 mph. She said that she had never hit the ball that hard before.
Now she’s aiming to become the first teenager to win Indian Wells women’s singles title since Bianca Andreescu in 2019.
Her coach, Conchita Martínez, lost in the finals (1992, 1996) both times she made it during her playing career. Andreeva said that she’ll try to win it for her on Sunday.
“I know my coach lost in the finals,” Andreeva said with a smile, “so I’m gonna try to do better than her.”
To do it, she’ll need to beat Sabalenka, the top-ranked player in the world, who has already beaten Andreeva twice this year.
“Yeah, the matches that we played this year didn’t really go my way,” Andreeva said of the two losses. “I’m gonna try to take a revenge, because I still have nothing to lose, and I feel like the match is going to be probably entertaining. There is going to be a lot of, I think, a lot of winners, a lot of great points.”
Andrew John covers the BNP Paribas Open for The Desert Sun and the USA TODAY Network. Email him at [email protected].
