By Chris Oddo | @TheFanChild | Monday June 2, 2025
Paris – Mirra Andreeva — how can she be solely 18?
Have a look at the courtroom craft, the nuance, and the been-there-done-that calm of the Russian. Have a look at the snappy energy, the swish slides, the flexibility to face tall on the large stage.
Watching her fourth-round match on courtroom Suzanne-Lenglen towards Daria Kasatkina, I requested myself that query.
Going through a participant who had gained the pair’s solely assembly, and one who had been to the quarterfinals in Paris on two earlier events, Andreeva took the courtroom with a way of objective, and an underlying calm.
Final 12 months in Paris when she broke out and reached the semifinal, she was ranked quantity 38 on the earth. This 12 months she’s at quantity six, and there is a good motive for that. Anybody who watched her win titles in Dubai and Indian Wells this spring is aware of that she has made an infinite step up in her recreation.
What was spectacular greater than anything within the first set of her showdown with Kasatkina on Monday was the Russian’s poise.
She performed a fairly subpar opening set by her personal lofty requirements, however she was so calm and so current that she was nonetheless capable of finagle her method out of a set towards one of many craftiest clay-courters in girls’s tennis. Andreeva was in peril of happening a break whereas serving at 3-3 and taking part in fairly poorly in that second, but she summoned the power and the braveness to avoid wasting a pair of break factors.
2 – Mirra Andreeva is the youngest participant to achieve back-to-back Ladies’s Singles quarter-finals at Roland Garros since Martina Hingis (1997-1998). Queen.#RolandGarros | @rolandgarros @WTA @WTA_insider pic.twitter.com/duVhydxNbs
— OptaAce (@OptaAce) June 2, 2025
From there, she took the final three video games of the opening set. Andreeva’s vastly improved psychological talents mixed with all of the instruments that she possesses makes for an extremely promising participant.
This match was really dominated by Kasatkina in some ways. There was a brilliant spot from Andreeva early within the second set and she or he took a 2-0 lead with some elevated play.
After that Kasatkina took cost and gained 5 out of six video games and even had a set level to pressure a decider. That is the place Andreeva’s confirmed her class.
It could’ve been very simple for her to get upset. Many gamers have misplaced the plot in comparable conditions, when hounded by a participant with a difficult recreation. However Andreeva simply stored plugging. She wasn’t executing the way in which she would’ve appreciated, so she was pressured to depend on protection, positivity, and opportunism.
She did this simply that.
Saving the set level and forcing Kasatkina to hit another ball, time and time once more, the Russian was in down-and-dirty mode, doing no matter it took to show the screws. Finally, it annoyed Kasatkina, and Andreeva discovered what she was lacking for many of the match down the stretch, as she reeled off 11 of the ultimate 13 factors to notch a large win.
She turns into the youngest participant to achieve back-to-back quarterfinals in Paris since Hingis in 1998.
The explanation she did it’s her psychological recreation.
