I’ve seen sufficient: Sound the alarm reserved for prodigies, actual hoopers, absolute canine who will chew themselves within the arm within the self-destructive pursuit of excellence, as a result of 16-year-old Mirra Andreeva has once more reached the fourth spherical of a significant. I watched her take out seeded gamers at her first-ever Wimbledon, and now, in her first look in the primary draw of the Australian Open, she’s doing the identical. She nonetheless has age-based restrictions on the variety of tour occasions she’s allowed to play. This is meant to guard her, however maybe it’s actually for the well-being of her elder colleagues.
Ons Jabeur ought to be included in that quantity. Andreeva’s activity within the second spherical was to beat her idol, the No. 6 seed, on a present courtroom. That might have been a disorienting problem for a child; as a substitute the disorientation ran the wrong way, as Andreeva routed an out-of-sorts Jabeur in 54 minutes. We might speak in regards to the tennis, however there wasn’t actually a lot of a tennis match right here in any respect, only one participant eradicating one other with the businesslike ease of a veteran who absolutely meant to stay round for week two. After her 6-0, 6-2 victory Andreeva talked about how a lot she admired Jabeur’s sport and the way a lot she had matured since final 12 months—again she was only a child, versus now.
Andreeva’s success in Australia seemed to have run its course throughout a yo-yo-ing third-round match in opposition to Diane Parry. The 21-year-old Parry had been tormenting her junior with low-skidding slice backhands and Andreeva fell right into a 1-6, 6-1, 5-1 gap. At that time she bit her own arm in anger. That’s some maladaptive teen habits, you would possibly suspect. Or is it as a substitute simply one other indicator of greatness, Andy Murray questioned from his couch:
Game by sport, Andreeva reasserted herself, erasing one match level at 5-2 when a possible Parry passing shot sailed nicely extensive, and finally leveling the set at 5-5. It was on this stretch of the match that she proved simply how cussed her tennis might be, and this rally particularly is among the factors of the match for me:
Andreeva will monitor down each shot. It’s not—or not but, at the very least—a strong fashion of tennis, however as a substitute a refined and exact one, counting on motion, placement, and a lethal two-handed backhand. In these respects I see some shades of Daniil Medvedev; perhaps it is no coincidence that she trains on the academy in Cannes the place he got here up.
Andreeva is humorous in interviews, and generally barely scary. “Fourth spherical is nothing,” Andreeva said after her Parry win. What 16-year-old says that? “Maybe if I win a slam, I’ve to win three extra matches, and it’s actually robust to win seven matches in a row. I don’t suppose that I did one thing unimaginable. I’ve time to do it, I hope.” A remarkable 6-3 record at the majors suggests she’ll have plenty of chances.
