Mirra Andreeva hit two milestones with one brilliant week of tennis in Dubai. The 17-year-old won her first WTA 1000 title at the hard-court event, and with it earned her Top 10 debut in the singles rankings.
The youngest-ever champion at the WTA 1000 level, Andreeva soared to the trophy with the loss of just one set in six victories. She notched victories against three Grand Slam champions — Marketa Vondrousova, Iga Swiatek and Elena Rybakina — before beating the unseeded Clara Tauson, 7-6(1), 6-1 in Saturday night's final.
Her run moved her up five places to No. 9 in Monday's WTA rankings, making her the first 17-year-old to be ranked in the Top 10 since Nicole Vaidisova in 2007. She is the seventh player in the past 30 years to make her Top 10 debut before her 18th birthday, which falls on April 29.
"Now when you enter Top 10 and the higher your ranking is, the slower and longer it's going to take for you to be even higher because the difference in the points is very, very short, very small," said Andreeva, the lone teenager in the WTA's Top 100. "I think it's going to be hard to enter the Top 5. This is the exact goal that I'm going to set for myself, to be Top 5 by the end of the year. I'm very curious if I will be able to achieve it."
Now 2-1 in WTA singles finals, Andreeva's ranking was also boosted by her run to the Roland Garros semifinals last season. She defeated then-world No. 2 Aryna Sabalenka in the Paris quarterfinals and last week knocked off current No. 2 Swiatek, 6-3, 6-3. Andreeva won her first tour-level title last July as the top seed at the WTA 250 in Iasi, Romania, and reached a WTA 500 final in Ningbo, China, last October.
Andreeva has twice competed at the US Open, reaching the singles second round in each of the past two years. She lost to eventual champion Coco Gauff in 2023 and to another American, Ashlyn Krueger, as the 21st seed in 2024. Andreeva has been to at least the fourth round at each of the other Grand Slams, reaching that stage twice at the Australian Open.
