A first career WTA singles title. A maiden Grand Slam semifinal at Roland Garros. A career-high ranking of No. 23. A fruitful coaching partnership with a Grand Slam champion.
2024 has already been a banner year for 17-year-old sensation Mirra Andreeva, but if the youngster has her way, it might also include a run deep into the second week of the US Open.
Andreeva already announced herself in the pro ranks last year en route to being named the 2023 WTA Newcomer of the Year with a series of results that players even twice her age can't boast. At age 15, she reached the fourth round of the WTA 1000 in Madrid in her WTA main-draw debut, beating two Top 20 players along the way, and also reached the third and fourth rounds of Roland Garros and Wimbledon, respectively. After starting 2022 ranked outside the Top 400, she finished 2023 inside the Top 50.
After some growing pains—she didn't win a match between making the fourth round of the Australian Open in January and the clay-court WTA 250 in Rouen, France nearly three months later, and missed March's Miami Open with injury—Andreeva's prodigious talent is again shining through under the guidance of former world No. 2 Conchita Martinez, whom she started a coaching trial with in April.
In the spring, she became the youngest Grand Slam semifinalist in 27 years at Roland Garros, holding her nerve to beat an ailing Aryna Sabalenka in the quarters and handing the Australian Open champ her only loss at a Grand Slam this year. Last month, Andreeva won her first WTA tour-level singles title with a victory in Iasi, Romania, handling the pressure that came with being the No. 1 seed at that tournament with aplomb.
Just over a week after that milestone, Andreeva teamed with another young talent, the 20-year-old Diana Shnaider, to win a silver medal in doubles at the Paris Olympics, and the watershed moments kept coming this week in Cincinnati. There, she reached her first WTA 1000 quarterfinal by beating No. 11 seed Emma Navarro and former world No. 1 Karolina Pliskova before exacting her revenge on Jasmine Paolini, the No. 5 seed, who beat her in the penultimate round at Roland Garros.
In the final eight, she gave world No. 1 and 2022 US Open champion Iga Swiatek all she could handle in a 4-6, 6-3, 7-5 defeat, an opportunity that Andreeva said she was "super excited" to have prior to the match.
But with all that behind her, Andreeva's next target is New York for her second US Open main draw. In just her seventh major, she'll already be seeking to complete the boxed set of second-week showings. In her debut at last year's Open, Andreeva lost in the second round to eventual champion Coco Gauff in Arthur Ashe Stadium—their second match at a major (Gauff also won in three sets last year in Paris).
The reigning US Open champion has spoken highly of Andreeva, predicting a "long ... and successful" career for her, and Andreeva herself has spoken candidly of similarly lofty goals. Couple the ease in which she speaks with the world's media with the frankness with which she articulates her desire to end her career as one of the game's great champions, and Andreeva beguiles her tender years.
But just as often, she slips into the earnest giggles and wide-eyed enthusiasm that makes fans remember just how young she is.
"I would say that I am almost like a normal teenager, because I still have to do my school that I don't like to do," Andreeva said at Roland Garros. "I watch a lot of TV series on my spare time. I watch Netflix. I sometimes spend too much time on my Instagram, or I just do some crap when I'm at home. I laugh, I talk, and yeah, just doing some normal things.
"But maybe what makes me a little different is that, I don't know if I can say that I'm mature, but I feel myself a mature person, and I feel that I know what I'm doing."
In the concrete jungle where dreams are made of, that shrewdness might just be the X-fact that sends this teen titan onto even greater things.
