MIRRA ANDREEVA LEFT the 2023 Australian Open in tears.
She had lost to her close friend Alina Korneeva in a marathon three-set match in the junior final, and after three hours and 17 minutes, she couldn't hide her emotions during the trophy presentation or as she walked off the court at Rod Laver Arena.
What a difference a year makes.
On Wednesday, the now-16-year-old Andreeva played at Rod Laver for the first time since that devastating loss. This time, she defeated three-time major finalist Ons Jabeur in staggering, head-turning fashion 6-0, 6-2, in the second round of the main draw.
Then on Friday, she cemented her place in tennis lore by staging the most improbable of comebacks. Trailing Diane Parry 5-1 in the deciding set, Andreeva staved off match point and relentlessly clawed her way back to win the match 1-6, 6-1, 7-6 (5). Each point won, each "Come on!" she yelled to herself, enamored her more to the packed-to-capacity crowd on Court 3 and to those on social media, including Andy Murray.
Andreeva down 5-1 in third. Commentator "she really needs to work on mental side of her game.. she's too hard on herself when she's losing"
— Andy Murray (@andy_murray) January 19, 2024
30 minutes later 7-6 Andreeva wins.
Maybe the reason she turned the match round is because of her mental strength. Maybe she turned the...
Darren Cahill proclaimed she would be "deeply entrenched in the top 10" within the next year on the ESPN broadcast moments after the match.
"Everything she needs to be a superstar in this game, she's got it," Cahill said.
It's been a wild, star-making year since Andreeva's heartbreak in Melbourne. She played in two ITF tournaments following the loss. She won them both. Playing as a wild card, Andreeva won her first WTA match at the 1000-level Madrid Open in April. She went on to win again. And again. She ultimately reached the Round of 16. Her fearless play spoke for itself, and charming interviews only furthered her status as one to watch.
Her rise continued over the next few months. Coming through qualifying at both events, she reached the third round at the French Open and the fourth round at Wimbledon. By October she had cracked the top 50 and was named the WTA's 2023 Newcomer of the Year in December.
In the new year, she's been even better.
Andreeva reached the quarterfinals in Brisbane earlier this month, and now she has a chance to reach the quarterfinals at a major for the first time. When she takes on 2021 French Open champion Barbora Krejcikova on Sunday, she will become the youngest player since Coco Gauff to have made two round of 16 Grand Slam appearances. But while the world is gushing over what she's achieved so far, Andreeva is far from satisfied. She knows what she's capable of.
"I don't think it's a big deal," Andreeva said after her win over Parry. "I mean, fourth round, yes, I'm 16, maybe it's a bit new. Honestly, I don't think that I did something amazing. I'm just trying to win a match. I'm just trying to fight.
"Fourth round is nothing. Maybe if I win a Slam. I have to win three more matches, and it's really tough to win seven matches in a row. I don't think that I did something incredible. I have time to do it, I hope."
ANDREEVA WAS BORN just about as far away from the global tennis hubs as one can get. Her hometown of Krasnoyarsk, Russia, in the heart of Siberia, is more than 2,000 miles from Moscow, and much further to the sunny havens of places like Monte Carlo or Florida.
According to Andreeva, her mother Raisa became interested in tennis after watching fellow Russian Marat Safin win the Australian Open in 2005. As soon as Mirra and her older sister Erika, now 19, were old enough, they began learning and playing the game together at their mother's urging.
It didn't take long for both sisters to show their potential in the sport. The family moved from Krasnoyarsk to the more temperate Sochi for the sisters to have more resources in the sport. Eventually they moved to Cannes, France, to train at Elite Tennis Center, an academy where Daniil Medvedev has also trained. The sisters also worked with an English tutor to be best prepared to speak the language most used on the tennis tour.
By the time she was 13, Andreeva was already winning matches -- and even a title -- on the junior tennis circuit. By 14, she led the Russian team to victory at the 2021 ITF World Junior Tennis Finals by winning all six of her singles matches. In 2022, she reached the quarterfinals of the junior French Open and US Open before opening 2023 with a run to the Australian Open junior final. She played in just one more junior event before officially turning her focus to the professional ranks.
The back-to-back ITF titles in Switzerland followed. But it was Madrid where she truly announced her arrival on the scene when she defeated tour veterans Leylah Fernandez, Beatriz Haddad Maia and Magda Linette, all in straight sets. After the third-round win over Linette, on her 16th birthday, Andreeva's interview with the Tennis Channel quickly went viral as she eagerly talked about her experience at the event and about Murray, one of her favorite players.
"The atmosphere is so special," Andreeva said. "You take a lunch with all these stars, let's say. You see Andy Murray ... you see his face and he's so beautiful in life. He's so amazing."
Murray responded on X soon after. "Imagine how good she's going to be when she gets her eyes fixed," he wrote alongside a laughing-face emoji.
Andreeva lost to Aryna Sabalenka, the 2023 Australian Open champion, in the round of 16, but it didn't much matter. A star had officially been born.
SHE NEEDED TO WIN three matches in qualifying to advance to the main draw at Roland Garros, and Andreeva didn't drop a set in her first five matches in Paris. Then she faced 19-year-old Coco Gauff in a compelling third-round clash of teenagers. Despite Gauff's previous success at the event -- she reached the final in 2022 -- Andreeva did not appear, at least initially, to be intimidated by her opponent or the moment. She won the first set in a tiebreak. But Gauff went on to dominate the next two sets and Andreeva showed moments where she lost her composure, including smashing a racket and hitting a ball into the stands.
"For Mirra, what happened today, I think she's going to learn from it, for sure," Gauff said after the match. "It's frustrating. Tennis is a frustrating sport. I completely understand it. I've been there."
There had been several comparisons made between Andreeva and Gauff, who reached the fourth round in her first major as a 15-year-old in 2019, and even Gauff couldn't help but see parallels.
"I think she plays beyond her years, and I don't know, feel similar to how I was," Gauff said.
Andreeva suffered another tough defeat at Wimbledon against Madison Keys, who battled back from a set and a break down to win the match and advance to the quarterfinals. But the loss was another valuable lesson for Andreeva.
And on Friday, she showed she was very capable of fighting back. Point by point. Game by game.
"At 5-1, I don't know, I just tried to win at least one more game to not go 6-1, 1-6, 6-1," Andreeva said after the match. "I just try to win one more game to at least be 6-2 in the third. Then 5-2, she has match points. I'm going to the net. I'm thinking, 'Am I crazy?' I'm going to the net on match point. But then she missed a ball.
"I don't know, just the adrenaline, the desire, the feeling that I want to win. 5-3, I don't know, I tried to break her back. 30-love, then 30-all, I missed returns. I'm like, 'God, OK, that's it.' Then two crazy points ... At 6-5, I lost my serve. It was like, 'OK, 6-all.' I didn't think that's it. I already knew that I will win, but I just have to do everything for it."
The crowd jumped to its feet when the match was over. After a brief handshake with Perry, Andreeva let out a scream in celebration and relief.
Teen Queen 👑
— #AusOpen (@AustralianOpen) January 19, 2024
Mirra Andreeva erases a match point & 1-5 deficit to defeat Parry 1-6 6-1 7-6 [10-5] in the third round!#AusOpen • #AO2024@wwos • @espn • @eurosport • @wowowtennis pic.twitter.com/UHsjqGvuuu
There have been countless teenagers who have made a splash on tour, earning praise and hype for their achievements at such a young age. But for every Gauff, Serena and Venus Williams, or Martina Hingis, of whom Andreeva idolizes and has already been compared to, there are dozens of others who simply never live up to the lofty expectations.
Andreeva has already cemented her spot in the record books for some "youngest-ever" achievements, including becoming the youngest to ever record a bagel over a top-10 opponent in the first set at a Grand Slam in her match against Jabeur. But major titles -- the ultimate standard in terms of success for a professional tennis player -- are far from guaranteed.
"What she's doing at 16 years old is just exceptional," Medvedev, her fellow countryman, told reporters over the summer. "It's one thing to play good tennis. It's another thing to win these matches kind of in a way back-to-back. It's been already a lot of tournaments where she's passing qualies, making deep runs ...
"For the moment, she seems like a very big thing coming, but we never know."
Dominating week-to-week on the tour is not yet in the cards for Andreeva. In addition to finishing her education through an online school -- she has complained multiple times to the media about her disdain for chemistry classes -- she can only play a limited schedule on the WTA Tour due to her age. In an effort to prevent burnout among young players, those who are 16 are restricted to just 12 tour events. Once Andreeva turns 17 in April, she will be allowed to play 16 tournaments. (Such restrictions go away once a player turns 18.)
Andreeva is clearly making the best use of the time she does have on the court.
She entered the Australian Open ranked No. 47 and is currently projected at No. 32 -- a new career-high -- after reaching the round of 16. A victory over Krejcikova would propel her into the top 30 and set up a quarterfinal clash against Sabalenka or Amanda Anisimova, also once a heralded teenager who has recently returned to competition after a mental health break.
Win or lose on Sunday, the new ranking will allow her entry into almost every tournament she wants to play within her allotted quota and, in addition to her growing list of sponsors, her career earnings will have surpassed the $1 million mark.
But Andreeva said she was trying to not think about any of that. As hard as that sometimes might be.
"Sometimes when I'm lying in bed, I can overthink a little bit, but the next morning I'm totally fine," Andreeva said earlier this week. "I mean, I'm 16. Why do I have to think about the rankings? I'm going a bit higher, and so my goal is to go higher. So I don't know. I just try not to think about that and just to think about tennis and that's it."